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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.'

-Peter Drucker

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Few Companies That Installed

Peter Drucker

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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.'

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Financial "synergy" Is A Will-o'-the-wisp.it Looks Good On Paper, But It Fails To Work Out In Practice.

Profit For A Company Is Like Oxygen For A Person. If You Don't Have Enough Of It, You're Out Of The Game. But If You Think Your Life Is About Breathing, You're Really Missing Something.

What You Have To Do And The Way You Have To Do It Is Incredibly Simple. Whether You Are Willing To Do It Is Another Matter.

Will And Determination

A Man Should Never Be Appointed Into A Managerial Position If His Vision Focuses On People's Weaknesses Rather Than On Their Strengths.

Objectives Can Be Compared To A Compass Bearing By Which A Ship Navigates. A Compass Bearing Is Firm, But In Actual Navigation, A Ship May Veer Off Its Course For Many Miles. Without A Compass Bearing, A Ship Would Neither Find Its Port Nor Be Able To Estimate The Time Required To Get There.

Communication Always Makes Demands. It Always Demands That The Recipient Become Somebody, Do Something, Believe Something. It Always Appeals To Motivation.

There Are Companies That Are Good At Improving What They're Already Doing. There Are Companies That Are Good At Extending What They're Doing. And Finally There Are Companies That Are Good At Innovation. Every Large Company Has To Be Able To Do All Three - Improve, Extend, And Innovate - Simultaneously.

I Find More And More Executives Less And Less Well Informed About The Outside World, If Only Because They Believe That The Data On The Computer Printouts Are Ipso Facto Information.

What Managers Decide To Stop Doing Is Often More Important Than What They Decide To Do.

No One Learns As Much About A Subject As One Who Is Forced To Teach It.

The Only Things That Evolve By Themselves In An Organization Are Disorder, Friction And Malperformance.

The Dilemma Of Modern Society: The Conflict Between The Need For Capital Formation At A High Rate And The Popular Condemnation Of Interest And Dividends As "unearned Income" And "capitalist," If Not As Sinful And Wicked.

Everything Must Degenerate Into Work If Anything Is To Happen.

Management Must Take The Lead In Making Obsolete Its Own Products And Services Rather Than Waiting For A Competitor To Do So.

A Business Exists Because The Consumer Is Willing To Pay You His Money. You Run A Business To Satisfy The Consumer. That Isn't Marketing. That Goes Way Beyond Marketing.

It Takes Far Less Energy To Move From First-rate Performance To Excellence Than It Does To Move From Incompetence To Mediocrity.

There's No Such Thing As Knowledge Management; There Are Only Knowledgeable People. Information Only Becomes Knowledge In The Hands Of Someone Who Knows What To Do With It.

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

Free Enterprise Cannot Be Justified As Being Good For Business. It Can Be Justified Only As Being Good For Society.

The Productivity Of Work Is Not The Responsibility Of The Worker But Of The Manager.

Decisions Of The Kind The Executive Has To Make Are Not Made Well By Acclamation. They Are Made Well Only If Based On The Clash Of Conflicting Views...the First Rule In Decision-making Is That One Does Not Make A Decision Unless There Is Disagreement.

Innovative Efforts Should Never Report To Line Managers Charged With Responsibility For Ongoing Operations. The New Project Is An Infant And Will Remain One For The Foreseeable Future, And Infants Belong In The Nursery. The 'adults', That Is, The Executives In Charge Of Existing Businesses Or Products Will Have Neither The Time Nor Understanding For The Infant.

Meetings Are By Definition A Concession To Deficient Organization. For One Either Meets Or One Works.

The Great Mystery Isn't That People Do Things Badly But That They Occasionally Do A Few Things Well. The Only Thing That Is Universal Is Incompetence. Strength Is Always Specific! Nobody Ever Commented, For Example, That The Great Violinist Jascha Heifetz Probably Couldn't Play The Trumpet Very Well.

Progress Is Obtained Only By Exploiting Opportunities, Not By Solving Problems. When You Solve Problems, All You Do Is Guarantee A Return To Normalcy.

When The Business Grows, The Person Who Founded It Is Incredibly Busy. Rapid Growth Puts An Enormous Strain On A Business. You Outgrow Your Production Facilities. You Outgrow Your Management Capabilities.

We Can Ill Afford To Have Activities Conducted As "non-profit," That Is, As Activities That Devour Capital Rather Than Form It, If They Can Be Organized As Activities That Form Capital, As Activities That Make A Profit.

Too Many Leaders Try To Do A Little Bit Of 25 Things And Get Nothing Done. They Are Very Popular Because They Always Say Yes. But They Get Nothing Done.

Innovation Is The Specific Instrument Of Entrepreneurship. The Act That Endows Resources With A New Capacity To Create Wealth.

The Worker's Effectiveness Is Determined Largely By The Way He Is Being Managed.

Every Time You Do Something That Is Important, Write Down What You Expect Will Happen.

A Manager Sets Objectives - A Manager Organizes - A Manager Motivates And Communicates - A Manager, By Establishing Yardsticks, Measures - A Manager Develops People.

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

Teamwork Is Neither "good" Nor "desirable." It Is A Fact. Wherever People Work Together Or Play Together They Do So As A Team. Which Team To Use For What Purpose Is A Crucial, Difficult And Risky Decision That Is Even Harder To Unmake. Managements Have Yet To Learn How To Make It.

The Three Most Charismatic Leaders In This Century Inflicted More Suffering On The Human Race Than Almost Any Trio In History: Hitler, Stalin, And Mao. What Matters Is Not The Leader's Charisma. What Matters Is The Leader's Mission.

Look At Government Programs For The Past Fifty Years. Every Single One - Except Warfare - Achieved The Exact Opposite Of Its Announced Goal.

Our Job In Life Is To Make A Positive Difference, Not Prove We're Right.

The Most Serious Mistakes Are Not Being Made As A Result Of Wrong Answers. The True Dangerous Thing Is Asking The Wrong Question.

The Need To Manage Oneself Is Creating A Revolution In Human Affairs.

To Make A Living Is No Longer Enough. Work Also Has To Make A Life.

Meetings Are A Symptom Of Bad Organization. The Fewer Meetings The Better.

Tomorrow Everybody - Or Practically Everybody - Will Have Had The Education Of The Upper Class Of Yesterday, And Will Expect Equivalent Opportunities. That Is Why We Face The Problem Of Making Every Kind Of Job Meaningful And Capable Of Satisfying Every Educated Man.

Quality In A Product Or Service Is Not What The Supplier Puts In. It Is What The Customer Gets Out And Is Willing To Pay For. A Product Is Not Quality Because It Is Hard To Make And Costs A Lot Of Money, As Manufacturers Typically Believe. This Is Incompetence. Customers Pay Only For What Is Of Use To Them And Gives Them Value. Nothing Else Constitutes Quality.

Every Organization Must Be Prepared To Abandon Everything It Does To Survive In The Future.

Objectives Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments.

The True Business Of Every Company Is To Make And Keep Customers.

The Subordinate's Job Is Not To Reform Or Reeducate The Boss, Not To Make Him Conform To What The Business Schools Or The Management Book Say Bosses Should Be Like. It Is To Enable A Particular Boss To Perform As A Unique Individual.

Wherever An Impact Can Be Eliminated By Dropping The Activity That Causes It, This Is Therefore The Best-indeed The Only Truly Good-solution.

Because Its Purpose Is To Create A Customer, The Business Enterprise Has Two - And Only These Two — Basic Functions: Marketing And Innovation. Marketing And Innovation Produce Results; All The Rest Are 'costs'.

They Wrongly Believe That Good Intentions Move Mountains. Bulldozers Move Mountains. But There Are Exceptions.

Business Is Society's Change Agent.

Promotion Should Not Be More Important Than Accomplishment, Or Avoiding Instability More Important Than Taking The Right Risk.

Marketing Is Not Only Much Broader Than Selling, It Is Not A Specialized Activity At All. It Encompasses The Entire Business. It Is The Whole Business Seen From The Point Of View Of Its Final Result, That Is, From The Customer's Point Of View.

Morale In An Organization Does Not Mean That "people Get Along Together"; The Test Is Performance Not Conformance.

The Fundamental Reality For Every Worker, From Sweeper To Executive Vice-president, Is The Eight Hours Or So That He Spends On The Job. In Our Society Of Organizations, It Is The Job Through Which The Great Majority Has Access To Achievement, To Fulfillment, And To Community.

Keep The Boss Aware. Bosses, After All, Are Held Responsible By Their Own Bosses For The Performance Of Their Subordinates. They Must Be Able To Say: "i Know What Anne [or John] Is Trying To Do."

[management] Has Authority Only As Long As It Performs.

A Manager's Task Is To Make The Strengths Of People Effective And Their Weakness Irrelevant - And That Applies Fully As Much To The Manager's Boss As It Applies To The Manager's Subordinates.

Knowledge Applied Is Productivity.

We Live In An Age Of Unprecedented Opportunity: If You’ve Got Ambition And Smarts, You Can Rise To The Top Of Your Chosen Profession, Regardless Of Where You Started Out.

An Organization Which Just Perpetuates Today's Level Of Vision, Excellence, And Accomplishment Has Lost The Capacity To Adapt.

Of Those Things That Would Make A Difference, Which Are Right For Me?

Making A Difference

The Society Of Organizations Is New-only Seventy Years Ago Employees Were A Small Minority In Every Society.

The 1st Question The Effective Decision-maker Asks Is: 'is This A Generic Situation Or An Exception?'

Knowledge Has Become The Key Economic Resource And The Dominant-and Perhaps Even The Only-source Of Competitive Advantage.

If The Feudal Knight Was The Clearest Embodiment Of Society In The Early Middle Ages, And The "bourgeois" Under Capitalism, The Educated Person Will Represent Society In The Post-capitalist Society In Which Knowledge Has Become The Central Resource.

Erroneous Assumptions Can Be Disastrous.

Unless Commitment Is Made, There Are Only Promises And Hopes... But No Plans.

Keeping Promises

If You Want To Predict The Future Create It.

To Survive And Succeed, Every Organization Will Have To Turn Itself Into A Change Agent

For The First Four Years, No New Enterprise Produces Profits. Even Mozart Didn't Start Writing Music Until He Was Four.

An Executive Should Be A Realist; And No One Is Less Realistic Than The Cynic.

A Superior Who Works On His Own Development Sets An Almost Irresistible Example.

Ideas Are Like Frog Eggs: You've Got To Lay A Thousand To Hatch One.

The Purpose Of An Organization Is To Enable Ordinary Humans Beings To Do Extraordinary Things.

The Final Test Of Greatness In A Ceo Is How Well He Chooses A Successor And Whether He Can Step Aside And Let The Successor Run The Company.

No Business Can Do Everything. Even If It Has The Money, It Will Never Have Enough Good People. It Has To Set Priorities. The Worst Thing To Do Is A Little Bit Of Everything. This Makes Sure That Nothing Is Being Accomplished. It Is Better To Pick The Wrong Priority Than None At All.

When A Subject Becomes Totally Obsolete We Make It A Required Course.

Marketing Is The Distinguishing, Unique Function Of The Business.

If A Government Commission Had Worked On The Horse, You Would Have The First Horse That Could Operate Its Knee Joint In Both Directions. The Trouble Is It Couldn't Have Stood Up.

Management Means, In The Last Analysis, The Substitution Of Thought For Brawn And Muscle, Of Knowledge For Folkways And Superstition, And Of Cooperation For Force. It Means The Substitution Of Responsibility For Obedience To Rank, And Of Authority Of Performance For The Authority Of Rank.

Nothing Is Less Productive Than To Make More Efficient What Should Not Be Done At All.

Procrastination

Productive Life

Although He Reputedly Hated The Label Of 'guru', Peter Drucker Was, By Any Standards, The Greatest Management Guru The World Has Yet Seen. In 1996, The Mckinsey Quarterly Journal Described Him As The 'the One Guru To Whom Other Gurus Kowtow' And Robert Heller Described Him As 'the Greatest Man In The History Of Management', Praise Indeed For A Man Who Described Himself As 'just An Old Journalist'.

If "socialism" Is Defined As "ownership Of The Means Of Production"--and This Is Both The Orthodox And The Only Rigorous Definition--then The United States Is The First Truly Socialist Country.

Socialist Countries

Decisions Exist Only In The Present.

Profit Is Not The Purpose Of A Business, But Rather The Test Of Its Validity

In The Next Economic Downturn There Will Be An Outbreak Of Bitterness And Contempt For The Supercorporate Chieftains Who Pay Themselves Millions. In Every Major Economic Downturn In Us History The Villains Have Been The Heroes During The Preceding Boom.

Every Three Or Four Years I Pick A New Subject. It May Be Japanese Art; It May Be Economics. Three Years Of Study Are By No Means Enough To Master A Subject But They Are Enough To Understand It. So For More Than 60 Years I Have Kept Studying One Subject At A Time.

The Great Challenge To Management Today Is To Make Productive The Tremendous New Resource, The Knowledge Worker. This, Rather Than The Productivity Of The Manual Worker, Is The Key To Economic Growth And Economic Performance In Today's Society.

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

Defending Yesterday Is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

One Can Either Work Or Meet. One Cannot Do Both At The Same Time.

You Cannot Prevent A Major Catastrophe, But You Can Build An Organization That Is Battle-ready, Where People Trust One Another. In Military Training, The First Rule Is To Instill Soldiers With Trust In Their Officers - Because Without Trust, They Won't Fight.

Listening (the First Competence Of Leadership) Is Not A Skill, It Is A Discipline. All You Have To Do Is Keep Your Mouth Shut.

Fortunately Or Unfortunately, The One Predictable Thing In Any Organization Is The Crisis. That Always Comes. That's When You Do Depend On The Leader: The Job Of The Leader Is To Build An Organization That Is Battle-ready, That Has High Morale, That Knows How To Behave, That Trusts Itself, And Where People Trust One Another.

The Most Important Work Of The Executive Is To Identify The Changes That Have Already Happened. The Important Thing . . . Is To Exploit The Changes That Have Already Occurred And To Use Them As Opportunities.

The Really Important Things Are Said Over Cocktails And Are Never Done.

The Purpose Of Information Is Not Knowledge. It Is Being Able To Take The Right Action.

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.'

Communism Is Evil. Its Driving Forces Are The Deadly Sins Of Envy And Hatred.

Absolute Size By Itself Is No Indicator Of Success And Achievement, Let Alone Of Managerial Competence. Being The Right Size Is.

The Pertinent Question Is Not How To Do Things Right - But How To Find The Right Things To Do, And To Concentrate Resources And Efforts On Them.

Pertinent Questions

Strategic Planning Is The Continuous Process Of Making Present Entrepreneurial (risk-taking) Decisions Systematically And With The Greatest Knowledge Of Their Futurity; Organizing Systematically The Efforts Needed To Carry Out These Decisions; And Measuring The Results Of These Decisions Against The Expectations Through Organized, Systematic Feedback.

Few Relationships Are As Critical To The Business Enterprise As The Relationship To The Government. Managers Have Responsibility For This Relationship As Part Of Their Responsibility To The Enterprise Itself. It Is An Area Of Social Impact Of The Business. To A Large Extent The Relationship To Government Results From What Businesses Do Or Fail To Do.

Business Exists To Supply Goods And Services To Customers And Economic Surplus To Society, Rather Than To Supply Jobs To Workers And Managers Or Even Dividends To Shareholders.

As Soon As You Move One Step Up From The Bottom, Your Effectiveness Depends On Your Ability To Reach Others Through The Spoken And Written Word.

Time Is The Scarcest Resource And Unless It Is Managed Nothing Else Can Be Managed.

All Earlier Pluralist Societies Destroyed Themselves Because No One Took Care Of The Common Good. They Abounded In Communities But Could Not Sustain Community, Let Alone Create It.

No Other Area Offers Richer Opportunities For Successful Innovation Than The Unexpected Success.

Thus, For Those Who Are Willing To Go Out Into The Field, To Look And To Listen, Changing Demographics Is Both A Highly Productive And A Highly Dependable Innovation Opportunity.

Most Of What We Call Management Consists Of Making It Difficult For People To Get Their Work Done.

Funny Inspirational

Profit Is Not The Explanation, Cause, Or Rationale Of Business Behavior And Business Decisions, But The Test Of Their Validity.

Yet There Is Nothing More Dangerous Than To Be Premature In Exploiting A Change In Perception.

Nobody Can Predict The Future; The Idea Is To Have A Firm Grasp Of The Present.

What We Are Good At Comes Easy, And We Believe That Unless It Comes Hard, It Can't Be Very Good.

(waste = Loss): The First Rule Of Business Is To Survive And The Guiding Principle Of Business Economics Is Not The Maximisation Of Profit, It Is The Avoidance Of Loss

Guiding Principles

If A Business Is To Be Considered A Continuous Process, Instead Of A Series Of Disjointed Stop-and-go Events, Then The Economic Universe In Which A Business Operates-and All The Major Events Within It-must Have Rhyme, Rhythm, Or Reason.

Leadership Is All Hype. We've Had Three Great Leaders In This Century-hitler, Stalin, And Mao.

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

Adequacy Is The Enemy Of Excellence.

Society, Community, Family Are All Conserving Institutions. They Try To Maintain Stability And To Prevent, Or At Least Slow Down, Change. But The Organization Of The Post-capitalist Society Of Organizations Is A Destabilizer. Because Its Function Is To Put Knowledge To Work - On Tools, Processes, And Products; On Work; On Knowledge Itself - It Must Be Organized For Constant Change.

Growth That Adds Volume Without Improving Productivity Is Fat. Growth That Diminishes Productivity Is Cancer.

The Effective Executive Knows That It Is Easier To Raise The Performance Of One Leader Than It Is To Raise The Performance Of A Whole Mass. She Therefore Makes Sure She Puts Into The Leadership Position, Into The Standard-setting, The Performance-making Position The Person Who Has The Strength To Do The Outstanding Pacesetting Job. This Always Requires Focus On The One Strength Of A Person And Dismissal Of Weaknesses As Irrelevant Unless They Hamper The Full Deployment Of The Available Strength.

Successful Leaders Don't Start Out Asking, 'what Do I Want To Do?' They Ask, 'what Needs To Be Done?' Then They Ask, 'of Those Things That Would Make A Difference, Which Are Right For Me?'

Technology Is Not About Tools, It Deals With How Man Works.

"the Area In Which The Executive First Encounters The Challenge Of Strength Is In Staffing. The Effective Executive Fills Positions And Promotes On The Basis Of What A Man Can Do. He Does Not Make Staffing Decisions To Minimize Weaknesses But To Maximize Strength."

By Themselves, Character And Integrity Do Not Accomplish Anything. But Their Absence Faults Everything Else.

Most Leaders Don't Need To Learn What To Do. They Need To Learn What To Stop.

What The Customer Buys And Considers Value Is Never A Product. It Is Always Utility, That Is, What A Product Or A Service Does For The Customer.

To Make Knowledge Productive, We Will Have To Learn To See Both Forest And Tree. We Will Have To Learn To Connect.

In The Political, The Social, The Economic, Even The Cultural Sphere, The Revolutions Of Our Time Have Been Revolutions "against" Rather Than Revolutions "for"... On The Whole Throughout This Period The Man--or Party--that Stood For Doing The Positive Has Usually Cut A Pathetic Figure; Well Meaning But Ineffectual, Civilized But Unrealistic, He Was Suspect Alike To [by Both] The Ultras Of Destruction And The Ultras Of Preservation And Restoration.

The Ultimate Resource In Economic Development Is People. It Is People, Not Capital Or Raw Materials That Develop An Economy.

Above All, Innovation Is Not Invention. It Is A Term Of Economics Rather Than Of Technology.

The New Always Looks So Puny-so Unpromising-next To The Reality Of The Massive, Ongoing Business.

There's Nothing So Useless Than Executing A Task Efficiently When It Actually Never Should Have Been Executed At All.

The Fewer Data Needed, The Better The Information. And An Overload Of Information, That Is, Anything Much Beyond What Is Truly Needed, Leads To Information Blackout. It Does Not Enrich, But Impoverishes.

The Greatest Change In Corporate Culture - And The Way Business Is Being Conducted - May Be The Accelerated Growth Of Relationships Based... On Partnership.

The Most Valuable Assets Of A 20th-century Company Were Its Production Equipment. The Most Valuable Assets Of A 21st-century Institution, Whether Business Or Nonbusiness, Will Be Its Knowledge, Workers, And Their Productivity.

Knowledge Workers

For The Social Ecologist Language Is Not "communication." It Is Not Just "message." It Is Substance. It Is The Cement That Holds Humanity Together. It Creates Community And Communication. ...social Ecologists Need Not Be "great" Writers; But They Have To Be Respectful Writers, Caring Writers.

Mother Teresa's Numerical Results Were Not Her Greatest Contribution. Instead, She Made The World-and Especially India-conscious Of Compassion.

Fascism Is The Result Of The Collapse Of Europe's Spiritual And Social Order... Catastrophes Broke Through The Everyday Routine Which Makes Men Accept Existing Forms, Institutions And Tenets As Unalterable Natural Laws. They Suddenly Exposed The Vacuum Behind The Facade Of Society.

We Spend A Lot Of Time Teaching Leaders What To Do. We Don't Spend Enough Time Teaching Leaders What To Stop. Half The Leaders I Have Met Don't Need To Learn What To Do. They Need To Learn What To Stop

We Know Nothing About Motivation. All We Can Do Is Write Books About It.

The Postwar [wwii] Gi Bill Of Rights - And The Enthusiastic Response To It On The Part Of America's Veterans - Signaled The Shift To The Knowledge Society. Future Historians May Consider It The Most Important Event Of The Twentieth Century. We Are Clearly In The Midst Of This Transformation; Indeed, If History Is Any Guide, It Will Not Be Completed Until 2010 Or 2020. But Already It Has Changed The Political, Economic And Moral Landscape Of The World.

Important Events

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

Unless A Decision Has Degenerated Into Work, It Is Not A Decision; It Is At Best A Good Intention.

Good Intentions

The Honest Work Of Yesterday Has Lost Its Social Status, Its Social Esteem.

The Computer Actually May Have Aggravated Management's Degenerative Tendency To Focus Inward On Costs.

In All Recorded History There Has Not Been One Economist Who Has Had To Worry About Where The Next Meal Would Come From.

Your First And Foremost Job As A Leader Is To Take Charge Of Your Own Energy And Then Help To Orchestrate The Energy Of Those Around You.

Work Is An Extension Of Personality. It Is Achievement. It Is One Of The Ways In Which A Person Defines Himself, Measures His Worth, And His Humanity.

There Are Just Two Questions To Ask To Attain Success In Business: First, "what Business Am I In?" Second, "how's Business?"

Business Success

The Manager Is A Servant. His Master Is The Institution He Manages And His First Responsibility Must Therefore Be To It.

Successful Careers Are Not Planned. They Develop When People Are Prepared For Opportunities Because They Know Their Strengths, Their Method Of Work, And Their Values. Knowing Where One Belongs Can Transform An Ordinary Person - Hardworking And Competent But Otherwise Mediocre - Into An Outstanding Performer.

Most Americans Do Not Know What Their Strengths Are. When You Ask Them, They Look At You With A Blank Stare, Or They Respond In Terms Of Subject Knowledge, Which Is The Wrong Answer.

You Can't Manage Knowledge.knowledge Is Between Two Ears And Only Between Two Ears.

It Is Commonly Believed That Innovations Create Changes - But Few Ever Do. Successful Innovations Exploit Changes That Have Already Happened.

Replace Your Pursuit Of Success With The Pursuit Of Contribution.

Managers Are The Basic And Scarcest Resource Of Any Business Enterprise.

But Innovation Is More Than A New Method. It Is A New View Of The Universe, As One Of Risk Rather Than Of Chance Or Of Certainty. It Is A New View Of Man's Role In The Universe; He Creates Order By Taking Risks. And This Means That Innovation, Rather Than Being An Assertion Of Human Power, Is An Acceptance Of Human Responsibility.

During Periods Of Discontinuous, Abrupt Change, The Essence Of Adaptation Involves A Keen Sensitivity To What Should Be Abandoned - Not What Should Be Changed Or Introduced. A Willingness To Depart From The Familiar Has Distinct Survival Value.

Understanding Our Strengths, Articulating Our Values, Knowing Where We Belong -- These Are Also Essential To Addressing One Of The Great Challenges Of Organizations: Improving The Abysmally Low Productivity Of Knowledge Workers.

I Have No Interest In Celebrities. If All The Superrich Disappeared, The World Economy Would Not Even Notice. The Superrich Are Irrelevant To The Economy.

Business Enterprise Is An Organ Of Society. There Is Only One Valid Definition Of Business Purpose: To Create A Customer.

One Of The Great Movements In My Lifetime Among Educated People Is The Need To Commit Themselves To Action. Most People Are Not Satisfied With Giving Money; We Also Feel We Need To Work.

Without Institution There Is No Management. But Without Management There Is No Institution.

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

The Most Probable Assumption Is That No Currently Working 'business Theory' Will Be Valid 10 Years Hence.

We Always Remember Best The Irrelevant.

Tomorrow Always Arrives. It Is Always Different. And Even The Mightiest Company Is In Trouble If It Has Not Worked On The Future. Being Surprised By What Happens Is A Risk That Even The Largest And Richest Company Cannot Afford, And Even The Smallest Business Need Not Run.

It Does Not Matter Whether The Worker Wants Responsibility Or Not, ...the Enterprise Must Demand It Of Him.

An Established Company Which, In An Age Demanding Innovation, Is Not Able To Innovation, Is Doomed To Decline And Extinction.

Schools Will Change More In The Next 30 Years Than They Have Since The Invention Of The Printed Book.

Ideas Are Cheap And Abundant; What Is Of Value Is The Effective Placement Of Those Ideas Into Situations That Develop Into Action.

Keep Your Eye On The Task, Not On Yourself. The Task Matters, And You Are A Servant

The Corporation Is The "master", The Employee Is The "servant". Because The Corporation Owns The Means Of Production Without Which The Employee Could Not Make A Living, The Employee Needs The Corporation More Than Vice Versa.

Knowledge Is The Source Of Wealth. Applied To Tasks We Already Know, It Becomes Productivity. Applied To Tasks That Are New, It Becomes Innovation.

One Has To Make A Decision When A Condition Is Likely To Degenerate If Nothing Is Done.

The Better A Man Is The More Mistakes Will He Make – For The More New Things He Will Try.

The Experience Of The Human Race Indicates Strongly That The Only Person In Abundant Supply Is The Universal Incompetent.

You Cannot Build Performance On Weaknesses. You Can Build Only On Strengths.

If General Perception Changes From Seeing The Glass As 'half-full' To Seeing It As 'half Empty' There Are Major Innovative Opportunities.

The Arts Alone Give Direct Access To Experience. To Eliminate Them From Education - Or Worse, To Tolerate Them As Cultural Ornaments - Is Antieducational Obscurantism. It Is Foisted On Us By The Pedants And Snobs Of Hellenistic Greece Who Considered Artistic Performance Fit Only For Slaves.

There Is One Qualification The Manager Cannot Acquire But Must Bring To The Task. It Is Not Genius; It Is Character.

Loafing" Is Easy, But "leisure" Is Difficult.

The Paradox Of The Prophet: His Very Success Is His Failure. The Prophet Whose Time Has Come No Longer Shocks; He Entertains.

People Are Effective Because They Say 'no,' Because They Say, 'this Isn't For Me.'

The Person Who Will Make The Greatest Contribution To A Company Is The Mature Person-and You Cannot Have Maturity If You Have No Life Or Interest Outside The Job.

The Healthier A New Venture And The Faster It Grows, The More Financial Feeding It Requires.

The Leader Of The Past Was A Person Who Knew How To Tell. The Leader Of The Future Will Be A Person Who Knows How To Ask.

Trees Die From The Top”. No One Should Ever Become A Strategist Unless He Or She Is Willing To Have His Or Her Character Serve As A Model For Subordinates

Management By Objective Works - If You Know The Objectives. Ninety Percent Of The Time You Don't.

Everything Requires Time. It Is The Only Truly Universal Condition. All Work Takes Place In Time And Uses Up Time. Yet Most People Take For Granted This Unique, Irreplaceable, And Necessary Resource. Nothing Else, Perhaps, Distinguishes Effective Executives As Much As Their Tender Loving Care Of Time.

Leadership Is Not Rank, Privileges, Title Or Money. It Is Responsibility.

You Must Accept That If The Computer Is A Tool, It Is The Job Of Tool User To Know What To Use It For.

Salvation By Society Failed The Most Where It Promised The Most, In The Communist Countries. But It Also Failed In The West. Practically No Government Program Enacted Since The 1950s In The Western World - Or In The Communist Countries - Has Been Successful.

The Individual Is The Central, Rarest, Most Precious Capital Resource Of Our Society.

Plans Are Only Good Intentions Unless They Immediately Degenerate Into Hard Work.

One Cannot Manage Change. One Can Only Be Ahead Of It.

Every First-rate Editor I Have Ever Heard Of Reads, Edits And Rewrites Every Word That Goes Into His Publication.... Good Editors Are Not 'permissive'; They Do Not Let Their Colleagues Do 'their Thing'; They Make Sure That Everybody Does The 'paper's Thing.' A Good, Let Alone A Great Editor Is An Obsessive Autocrat With A Whim Of Iron, Who Rewrites And Rewrites, Cuts And Slashes, Until Every Piece Is Exactly The Way He Thinks It Should Have Been Done.

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