Background Image

...

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.

-Peter Drucker

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Find More And

Peter Drucker

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Peter Drucker

An Employer Has No Business With A Man's Personality. Employment Is A Specific Contract Calling For A Specific Performance... Any Attempt To Go Beyond That Is Usurpation. It Is Immoral As Well As An Illegal Intrusion Of Privacy. It Is Abuse Of Power. An Employee Owes No "loyalty," He Owes No "love" And No "attitudes" - He Owes Performance And Nothing Else. .... The Task Is Not To Change Personality, But To Enable A Person To Achieve And To Perform.

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

The Young Knowledge Worker Whose Job Is Too Small To Challenge And Test His Abilities Either Leaves Or Declines Rapidly Into Premature Middle Age, Soured, Cynical, Unproductive.

Making Good Decisions Is A Crucial Skill At Every Level.

Working With People Is Difficult, But Not Impossible.

Ideas Are Somewhat Like Babies - They Are Born Small, Immature, And Shapeless. They Are Promise Rather Than Fulfillment. In The Innovative Company Executives Do Not Say, "this Is A Damn-fool Idea." Instead They Ask, "what Would Be Needed To Make This Embryonic, Half-baked, Foolish Idea Into Something That Makes Sense, That Is An Opportunity For Us?"

Brilliant Men Are Often Strikingly Ineffectual. They Fail To Realize That The Brilliant Insight Is Not By Itself Achievement. They Never Have Learned That Insights Become Effectiveness Only Through Hard Systematic Work.

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

Most Executives Have Learned That What One Postpones, One Actually Abandons ... Timing Is A Most Important Element In The Success Of Any Effort. To Do Five Years Later What Would Have Been Smart To Do Five Years Earlier, Is Almost A Sure Recipe For Frustration And Failure.

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

I No Longer Think That Learning How To Manage People, Especially Subordinates, Is The Most Important For Executives To Learn. I Am Teaching Above All Else, How To Manage Oneself.

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.

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

What People In Business Think They Know About The Customer And Market Is Likely To Be More Wrong Than Right...the Customer Rarely Buys What The Business Thinks It Sells Him.

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

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.

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.

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

Knowledge Is Being Applied To Knowledge Itself. It Is Now Fast Becoming The One Factor In Production, Sidelining Both Capital And Labour.

Success Always Obsoletes The Very Behavior That Achieved It.

Never Ask Who's Right. Start Out By Asking What Is Right. And You Find That Out By Listening To Dissenting, Disagreeing Opinions.

Trust Is Congruence Between What You Say And What You Do.

It Is Easier To Raise The Performance Of One Leader Than It Is To Raise The Performance Of A Whole Mass.

Defending Yesterday Is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

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.

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

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.

Strong People Have Strong Weaknesses.

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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

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.

Organizations Are No Longer Built On Force, But On Trust.

A Manager Is Responsible For The Application And Performance Of Knowledge.

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

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

The Success And Ultimately The Survival Of Every Business, Large Or Small, Depends In The Last Analysis On Its Ability To Develop People. This Ability Is Not Measured By Any Of Our Conventional Yardsticks Of Economic Success; Yet, Is The Final Measurement.

The Individual Needs The Return To Spiritual Values, For He Can Survive In The Present Human Situation Only By Reaffirming That Man Is Not Just A Biological And Psychological Being But Also A Spiritual Being, That Is Creature, And Existing For The Purposes Of His Creator And Subject To Him.

Leadership Is More Doing Than Dash.

Effective People Are Not Problem Minded; They're Opportunity-minded. They Feed Opportunities And Starve Problems. They Think Preventively.

This Society In Which Knowledge Workers Dominate Is In Danger Of A New "class Conflict" Between The Large Minority Of Knowledge Workers And The Majority Of Workers Who Will Make Their Livings Through Traditional Ways, Either By Manual Work... Or By Service Work. The Productivity Of Knowledge Work - Still Abysmally Low - Will Predictably Become The Economic Challenge Of The Knowledge Society. On It Will Depend The Ability Of The Knowledge Society To Give Decent Incomes, And With Them Dignity And Status, To Non Knowledge People.

There Is The General Belief That The Corporation Income Tax Is A Tax On The "rich" And On The "fat Cats." But With Pension Funds Owning 30% Of American Large Business-and Soon To Own 50%-the Corporation Income Tax, In Effect, Eases The Load On Those In Top Income Brackets And Penalizes The Beneficiaries Of Pension Funds.

In Business School Classrooms They Construct Wonderful Models Of A Non- World.

Effective Organizations Put People In Jobs In Which They Can Do The Most Good. They Place People -- And Allow People To Place Themselves -- According To Their Strengths.

When It Rains Manna From Heaven, Some People Put Up An Umbrella. Others Reach For A Big Spoon.

The Moment People Talk Of "implementing" Instead Of "doing," And Of "finalizing" Instead Of "finishing," The Organization Is Already Running A Fever.

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

Business Success

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

The Most Critical Case In A Corporation, Especially A Big One, Is When Everything Goes Well, When You Have Accomplished Your Objectives. When The Temptation Is To Work Twice As Hard Instead Of Saying, "we Have Accomplished Our Objectives, We Have To Think Again."

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

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.

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.

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

Rank Does Not Confer Privilege Or Give Power. It Imposes Responsibility.

All Companies Are Service Companies; Some Also Manufacture Products.

There's An Enormous Number Of Managers Who Have Retired On The Job.

Capitalism As A Social Order And As A Creed Is The Expression Of The Belief In Economic Progress As Leading Toward The Freedom And Equality Of The Individual In A Free And Open Society. Marxism Expects This Society To Result From The Abolition Of Private Profit. Capitalism Expects The Free And Equal Society To Result From The Enthronement Of Private Profit As Supreme Ruler Of Social Behavior.

The Best Plan Is Only A Plan... Unless It Degerates Into Work.

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

It Does Not Follow From The Separation Of Planning And Doing In The Analysis Of Work That The Planner And The Doer Should Be Two Different People. It Does Not Follow That The Industrial World Should Be Divided Into Two Classes Of People: A Few Who Decide What Is To Be Done, Design The Job, Set The Pace, Rhythm And Motions, And Order Others About; And The Many Who Do What And As They Are Told.

The Customer Rarely Buys What The Business Thinks It Sells Him.

The Company Is Not And Must Never Claim To Be Home, Family, Religion, Life Or Fate For The Individual. It Must Never Interfere In His Private Life Or His Citizenship. He Is Tied To The Company Through A Voluntary And Cancellable Employment Contract, Not Through Some Mystical Or Indissoluble Bond.

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

Top Management As A Function And As A Structure Was First Developed By Georg Von Siemens (1839-1901) In Germany Between 1870 And 1880, When He Designed And Built The Deutsche Bank And Made It, Within A Very Few Years, Into Continental Europe's Leading And Most Dynamic Financial Institution.

If You Want To Predict The Future Create It.

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.

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

Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Invaluable.

Project Management

The Computer Is A Moron.

When A Resource Is Scarce, You Increase Its Yield.

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

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

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

The Single Most Important Thing To Remember About Any Enterprise Is That Results Exist Only On The Outside.the Result Of A Business Is A Satisfied Customer. The Result Of A Hospital Is A Satisfied Patient. The Result Of A School Is A Student Who Has Learned Something And Puts It To Work Ten Years Later. Inside An Enterprise There Are Only Costs.

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

A Fundamental Responsibility Of Leadership Is Make Sure That Everybody Knows The Mission, Understands It, Lives It.

The Next Thing To Be Said About What Long-range Planning Is Not, Is That It Does Not Deal With Future Decisions. It Deals With The Futurity Of Present Decisions. Decisions Exist Only In The Present. The Question That Faces The Long-range Planner Is Not What We Should Do Tomorrow.

The Correct Assumption Is That What Individuals Have Learned By Age Twenty-one Will Begin To Become Obsolete Five To Ten Years Later And Will Have To Be Replaced-or At Least Refurbished-by New Learning, New Skills, New Knowledge.

Culture Eats Christianity For Breakfast.

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

Good Intentions

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.

A Business Enterprise Must Continue Beyond The Lifetime Of The Individual Or Of The Generation To Be Capable Of Producing Its Contributions To Economy And To Society.

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

A Primary Task Of Management In The Developed Countries In The Decades Ahead Will Be To Make Knowledge Productive.

Most People Think They Know What They Are Good At. They Are Usually Wrong... And Yet, A Person Can Perform Only From Strength.

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

Nothing Else, Perhaps, Distinguishes Effective Executives As Much As Their Tender Loving Care Of Time.

Time Management

Systematic Decision Review Also Shows Executives Their Own Weaknesses, Particularly The Areas In Which They Are Simply Incompetent. In These Areas, Smart Executives Don't Make Decisions Or Take Actions. They Delegate.

There Is A Point At Which A Transformation Has To Take Place.

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

Business Has Only Two Basic Functions - Marketing And Innovation.

There Is A Point Of Complexity Beyond Which A Business Is No Longer Manageable.

An Organization Belongs On A Sick List When Promotion Becomes More Important To Its People Than Accomplishment Of Their Job They Are In. It Is Sick When It Is More Concerned With Avoiding Mistakes Than With Taking Risks, With Counteracting The Weaknesses Of Its Members Than With Building On Their Strength. But It Is Sick Also When "good Human Relations" Become More Important Than Performance And Achievement.

Focus On Opportunities, Not Problems.

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.

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

Funny Inspirational

A Management Decision Is Irresponsible If It Risks Disaster This Year For The Sake Of A Grandiose Future.

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.

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

As A Rule We Perceive What We Expect To Perceive... The Unexpected Is Usually Not Received At All.

The Best Way To Predict The Future Is To Create It.

The World Economy Is Not Yet A Community--not Even An Economic Community...yet The Existence Of The "global Shopping Center" Is A Fact That Cannot Be Undone. The Vision Of An Economy For All Will Not Be Forgotten Again.

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.

An Institution Which Is Financed By A Budget - Or Which Enjoys A Monopoly Which The Customer Cannot Escape - Is Rewarded For What It Deserves Rather Than What It Earns. It Is Paid For 'good Intentions' And 'programs'. It Is Paid For Not Alienating Important Constituents Rather Than Satisfying Any One Group. It Is Misdirected By The Way It Is Being Paid Into Defining Performance And Results As What Will Produce The Budget Rather Than As What Will Produce Contribution.

The Only Definition Of A Leader Is Someone Who Has Followers.

We Have Tried To Substitute Mass For Purpose. We Have Tried To Regain Military Potency Of Defense By Making It Gigantic, Unwieldy, Complex. It Never Works.

Objectives Are Not Fate; They Are Direction. They Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments. They Do Not Determine The Future; They Are A Means To Mobilize Resources And Energies Of The Business For The Making Of The Future.

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

I Think The Growth Industry Of The Future In This Country And The World Will Soon Be The Continuing Education Of Adults. ...i Think The Educated Person Of The Future Is Somebody Who Realizes The Need To Continue To Learn. That Is The New Definition And It Is Going To Change The World We Live In And Work In.

Education Can No Longer Be The Sole Property Of The State.

Not To Innovate Is The Single Largest Reason For The Decline Of Existing Organizations. Not To Know How To Manage Is The Single Largest Reason For The Failure Of New Ventures.

To Arrive At The Definition Of The Problem He Must Begin By Finding The 'critical Factor'. This Is The Element (or Elements) In The Situation That Has To Be Changed Before Anything Else Can Be Changed, Moved, Acted Upon.

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

Communication Is Always "propaganda." The Emitter Always Wants "to Get Something Across."

Through Systematic Terror, Through Indoctrination, Through Systematic Manipulation Of Stimulus, Reward, And Punishment, We Can Today Break Man And Convert Him Into Brute Animal... The First Step Toward Survival Is Therefore To Make Government Legitimate Again By Attempting To Deprive It Of These Powers... By International Action To Ban Such Powers.

The Computer, Being A Mechanical Moron, Can Handle Only Quantifiable Data.

Businesses Once Grew By One Of Two Ways; Grass Roots Up, Or By Acquisition... Today Businesses Grow Through Alliances - All Kinds Of Dangerous Alliances. Joint Ventures And Customer Partnerings Which, By The Way, Very Few People Understand.

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

...because Knowledge Rapidly Deteriorates Unless It Is Used Constantly, Maintaining Within An Organization An Activity That Is Used Only Intermittently Guarantees Incompetence.

What Is The Manager's Job? It Is To Direct The Resources And The Efforts Of The Business Toward Opportunities For Economically Significant Results. This Sounds Trite - And It Is. But Every Analysis Of Actual Allocation Of Resources And Efforts In Business That I Have Ever Seen Or Made Showed Clearly That The Bulk Of Time, Work, Attention, And Money First Goes To Problems Rather Than To Opportunities, And, Secondly, To Areas Where Even Extraordinarily Successful Performance Will Have Minimal Impact On Results.

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

Balance Sheets Are Meaningless. Our Accounting Systems Are Still Based On The Assumption That 80% Of Costs Are Manual Labor.

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

Making Changes To Better Appeal To Customer Is Innovation.

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.

Every Organization Has To Prepare For The Abandonment Of Everything It Does.

Replace Your Pursuit Of Success With The Pursuit Of Contribution.

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

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

Leadership Is All About Getting Results.

The Fault Is In The System And Not In The Men.

One Does Not "manage" People. The Task Is To Lead People.

We Can't Make People Better By Trying To Eliminate Their Weaknesses, But We Can Help Then Perform Better By Building On Their Strengths.

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

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

True Marketing Starts...with The Customer, His Demographics, His Realities, His Needs, His Values. It Does Not Ask, "what Do We Want To Sell?" It Asks, "what Does The Customer Want To Buy?"

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.

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.

Universities Won't Survive. The Future Is Outside The Traditional Campus, Outside The Traditional Classroom. Distance Learning Is Coming On Fast.

Once The Facts Are Clear The Decisions Jump Out At You.

There Are Only Two Things In A Business That Make Money - Innovation And Marketing, Everything Else Is Cost.

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.

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.

No Organization Can Depend On Genius; The Supply Is Always Scarce And Unreliable. It Is The Test Of An Organization To Make Ordinary People Perform Better Than They Seem Capable Of, To Bring Out Whatever Strength There Is In Its Members, And To Use Each Person's Strength To Help All The Other Members Perform.

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

Once A Year Ask The Boss, "what Do I Or My People Do That Helps You To Do Your Job?" And "what Do I Or My People Do That Hampers You?"

It's More Important To Do The Right Thing Than To Do Things Right.

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

Decision Making Is The Specific Executive Task.

Decision Making

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

[t]hroughout The Ages To Be Educated Meant To Be Unproductive.... Our Word "school" - And Its Equivalent In All European Languages - Derives From A Greek Word Meaning "leisure.

That Knowledge Has Become The Resource, Rather Than A Resource, Is What Makes Our Society "post-capitalist.

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.

I'm A Writer. I Could Not Or Would Not Ever Run A Business. I Don't Even Have A Secretary. And Contrary To Some Of The Stereotypes, Entrepreneurs Are Not Loners. I Am.

What's Measured Improves

Economists Think The Poor Need Them To Tell Them That They Are Poor.

No One Has Ever Failed To Find The Facts They Are Looking For.

There Is An Unbroken Chain Of Opposition To The Introduction Of Economic Freedom And To The Capitalist Autonomy Of The Economic Sphere... In Every Case The Opposition Could Only Be Overcome - Peacefully Or By Force - Because Of The Promise Of Capitalism To Establish Equality... That This Promise Was An Illusion We All Know.

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

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.

The Only Thing We Know About The Future Is That It Will Be Different.

No Society Can Function As A Society, Unless It Gives The Individual Member Social Status And Function, And Unless The Decisive Social Power Is Legitimate.

What We Need Is An Entrepreneurial Society In Which Innovation And Entrepreneurship Are Normal, Steady And Continuous.

My Greatest Strength As A Consultant Is To Be Ignorant And Ask A Few Questions.

Asking Questions

Ignorant Masses

Asking Too Many Questions

And No Matter How Serious An Environmental Problem The Automobile Poses In Today's Big City, The Horse Was Dirtier, Smelled Worse, Killed And Maimed More People, And Congested The Streets Just As Much.

In The Managerial Organization, The Top People Sit In Judgment; In The Innovative Organization It Is Their Job To Encourage Ideas, No Matter How Unripe Or Crude.

As A Manager You're Paid To Be Uncomfortable. If You're Comfortable, It's A Sure Sign You're Doing Things Wrong.

Vision Without Execution Is Delusion. The Joy Is In The Results

If You Want It, Measure It. If You Can't Measure It, Forget It.

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

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.

Capitalism Is Being Attacked Not Because It Is Inefficient Or Misgoverned But Because It Is Cynical. And Indeed A Society Based On The Assertion That Private Vices Become Public Benefits Cannot Endure, No Matter How Impeccable Its Logic, No Matter How Great Its Benefits.

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

Keeping Promises

[the Masses] ... Must Turn Their Hopes Toward A Miracle. In The Depths Of Their Despair Reason Cannot Be Believed, Truth Must Be False, And Lies Must Be Truth. "higher Bread Prices," "lower Bread Prices," "unchanged Bread Prices" Have All Failed. The Only Hope Lies In A Kind Of Bread Price Which Is None Of These, Which Nobody Has Ever Seen Before, And Which Belies The Evidence Of One's Reason.

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.

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.

Information Knowledge

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

If You Want To Know What The Future Is, Be Part Of Its Development.

Business Purpose And Business Mission Are So Rarely Given Adequate Thought Is Perhaps The Most Important Cause Of Business Frustration And Failure.

If A Manager Spends More Than 10 Percent Of His Time On "human Relations" The Group Is Probably Too Large.

You Can Either Take Action, Or You Can Hang Back And Hope For A Miracle. Miracles Are Great, But They Are So Unpredictable.

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.

When Henry Ford Said, "the Customer Can Have A Car In Any Color As Long As It's Black," He Was Not Joking.

Strategy Is A Commodity, Execution Is An Art.

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

Time Is Totally Perishable And Cannot Be Stored. Yesterday's Time Is Gone Forever, And Will Never Come Back. Time Is Always In Short Supply. There Is No Substitute For Time. Everything Requires Time.

Now That Knowledge Is Taking The Place Of Capital As The Driving Force In Organizations Worldwide, It Is All Too Easy To Confuse Data With Knowledge And Information Technology With Information.

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.

Every Single Social And Global Issue Of Our Day Is A Business Opportunity In Disguise.

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

To Be A Manager Requires More Than A Title, A Big Office, And Other Outward Symbols Of Rank. It Requires Competence And Performance Of A High Order.

Efficiency, Which Is Doing Things Right, Is Irrelevant Until You Work On The Right Things.

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.

Information Is The Manager's Main Tool, Indeed The Manager's Capital, And It Is He Who Must Decide What Information He Needs And How To Use It.

Systematic Change Requires A Willingness To Look On Change As An Opportunity.

Leaders Shouldn?t Attach Moral Significance To Their Ideas: Do That, And You Can?t Compromise.

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

Innovation Requires Us To Systematically Identify Changes That Have Already Occurred In A Business - In Demographics, In Values, In Technology Or Science - And Then To Look At Them As Opportunities. It Also Requires Something That Is Most Difficult For Existing Companies To Do: To Abandon Rather Than Defend Yesterday.

Entrepreneurship Is Neither A Science Nor An Art. It Is A Practice.

Trending Author

Siegfried Sassoon

Nicolas Chamfort

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Category