Peter Drucker Quotes

Leadership is not rank, privileges, title or money. It is responsibility.

The real achiever do one thing at a time.

If you’re not living life on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.

No one has ever failed to find the facts they are looking for.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.

To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business.

It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.

Most innovators are successful to the extent to which they define risks and confine them.

One can either work or meet. One cannot do both at the same time.

Every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure.

Defending yesterday is far more risky than making tomorrow.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

The bеѕt wау tо predict уоur future іѕ tо create it.

What gets measured gets managed.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.

If you can't measure it, you can't change it.

Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we're right.

The key to greatness is to look for people's potential and spend time developing it.

Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.

Most leaders don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.

The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.

Focus on opportunities, not problems.

Don't solve problems. Pursue opportunities.

Mission defines strategy, and strategy defines structure.

The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

The only real difference between one organization and another is the performance of its people.

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.

The critical question is not "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"

Once the facts are clear the decisions jump out at you.

You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.

Leadership is an achievement of trust.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it.

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

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.

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.

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.

Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.

What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that’s another matter.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.

A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.

Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.

The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

Managers are action-focused; they are not philosophers and should not be.

The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills.Everything else will become obsolete over time.

It’s amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.

To make the future demands courage. It demands work. But it also demands faith.

If you have more than five goals, you have none.

The critical question is not “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?"

Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.

As a manager you’re paid to be uncomfortable. If you’re comfortable, it’s a sure sign you’re doing things wrong.

To make a living is no longer enough. Work also has to make a life.

There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.

Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.

There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, “What business am I in?” Second, “How’s business?”

The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it’s selling.

Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.

The most effective way to manage change is to create it.

Education gives you neither experience nor wisdom.

Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.

Ideas are like frog eggs: you’ve got to lay a thousand to hatch one.

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity.

You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

Look upon every obstacle as part payment towards your success.

Great wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

To survive and succeed, every organization will have to turn itself into a change agent.

Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer.

Do not measure your life by your goals but what you are doing to achieve them.

Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.

A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.

Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we’re right.