Peter Drucker Quotes, Status, and Thoughts

Leadership is an achievement of trust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mission defines strategy, and strategy defines structure.

Don't solve problems. Pursue opportunities.

Focus on opportunities, not problems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

What gets measured gets managed.

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

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

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

Defending yesterday is far more risky than making tomorrow.

Every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure.

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

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

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

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

Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

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

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

The real achiever do one thing at a time.

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

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

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

Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.

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

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

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

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

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

Look upon every obstacle as part payment towards your success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Education gives you neither experience nor wisdom.

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

Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.

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

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

Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

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

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

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.

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

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

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