
From Peter Drucker. The 64th in a series of collections of useable quotations
to make you look really smart in your next presentation or report.
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A manager is responsible for the application
and performance of knowledge.
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives
what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack
knowledge or information.
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try,
instead, to work with what you've got.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership
is defined by results not attributes.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to
tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks
have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive
clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will
come even more effective action.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that
endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it
vanishes.
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of
the time you don't.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make
decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous
mistake.
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to
get their work done.
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few
questions.
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to
manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along
under a leadership composed of average human beings.
People who don't take risks generally make
about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about
two big mistakes a year.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard
work.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people
to work.
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have
information about a product or a service that the customer does not and
cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the
profitability of brands.
Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet
developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and
performance. In teaching we rely on the "naturals," the ones who
somehow know how to teach.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the
product or service fits him and sells itself.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
The computer is a moron.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it
as an opportunity.
The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one
management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the
product.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.
The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically
eliminated the physical costs of communications.
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the
manager.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be
done at all.
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be
managed.
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at
night with no lights while looking out the back window.
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