Background Image

...

In A Few Hundred Years, When The History Of Our Time Will Be Written From A Long-term Perspective, It Is Likely That The Most Important Event Historians Will See Is Not Technology, Not The Internet, Not E-commerce. It Is An Unprecedented Change In The Human Condition. For The First Time - Literally - Substantial And Rapidly Growing Numbers Of People Have Choices. For The First Time, They Will Have To Manage Themselves. And Society Is Totally Unprepared For It.

-Peter Drucker

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In A Few Hundred

Peter Drucker

...

In A Few Hundred Years, When The History Of Our Time Will Be Written From A Long-term Perspective, It Is Likely That The Most Important Event Historians Will See Is Not Technology, Not The Internet, Not E-commerce. It Is An Unprecedented Change In The Human Condition. For The First Time - Literally - Substantial And Rapidly Growing Numbers Of People Have Choices. For The First Time, They Will Have To Manage Themselves. And Society Is Totally Unprepared For It.

Views: 6

Topic

Important Events

More From Peter Drucker

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.

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

There Are No Creeds In Mathematics.

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.

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.

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.

Leadership Is Defined By Results Not Attributes.

The Strength Of The Computer Lies In Its Being A Logic Machine. It Does Precisely What It Is Programed To Do. This Makes It Fast And Precise. It Also Makes It A Total Moron; For Logic Is Essentially Stupid.

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

Miracles Are Great, But They're So Damn Unpredictable.

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

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.

Great Wisdom Not Applied To Action And Behavior Is Meaningless Data.

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

You Cannot Predict The Future, But You Can Create 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.

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

Company Cultures Are Like Country Cultures. Never Try To Change One. Try, Instead, To Work With What You've Got.

One Cannot Hire A Hand; The Whole Man Always Comes With It.

In The Western Tradition, We Have Focused On Teaching As A Skill And Forgotten What Socrates Knew: Teaching Is A Gift, Learning Is A Skill.

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.

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

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.

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.

Knowledge Applied Is Productivity.

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

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

One Reason For The Tremendous Increase In Health-care Costs In The U.s. Is Managerial Neglect Of The "hotel Services" By The People Who Dominate The Hospital, Such As Doctors And Nurses.

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

All Economic Activity Is By Definition "high Risk." And Defending Yesterday--that Is, Not Innovating--is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

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

The Rule Should Be To Minimize The Need For People To Get Together To Accomplish Anything.

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

Managers Are Agents Of Transformation, Converting The Workforce In Developed Countries From One Of Manual Workers To One Of Highly Educated Knowledge Workers.

Knowledge Workers

Listening Is Not A Skill; It Is A Discipline.

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.

All Companies Are Service Companies; Some Also Manufacture Products.

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

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.

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?"

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.

The Tool User, Provided The Tool Is Made Well, Need Not, And Indeed Should Not, Know Anything About The Tool.

If You're Not Living Life On The Edge, You're Taking Up Too Much Space. The Best Way To Predict The Future Is To Create It.

To Succeed In This New World, We Will Have To Learn, First, Who We Are. Few People, Even Highly Successful People, Can Answer The Questions, Do You Know What You're Good At? Do You Know What You Need To Learn So That You Get The Full Benefit Of Your Strengths? Few Have Even Asked Themselves These Questions.

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

The Critical Question Is Not "how Can I Achieve?" But "what Can I Contribute?"

The First Step Toward Making The Worker Achieving Is To Make Work Productive.

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

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

The New Information Technology... Internet And E-mail... Have Practically Eliminated The Physical Costs Of Communications.

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

The One To Distrust Is The Person Who Never Makes A Mistake, Never Commits A Blunder, Never Fails In What He Tries To Do. Either He Is A Phony, Or He Stays With The Safe, The Tried And The Trivial.

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

We Do Not Need More Laws . No Country Suffers From A Shortage Of Laws. We Need A New Model .

One Either Meets Or One Works.

The Enterprise, By Definition, Must Be Capable Of Producing More Or Better Than All The Resources That Comprise It.

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.

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

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."

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

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

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

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.

The Job Of A Professional Manager Is Not To Like People. It Is Not To Change People. It Is To Put Their Strengths To Work.

The Fruit Of Your Work Grows On Other People's Trees

No Matter How Deeply Wedded One May Be To The Free Enterprise System (and I, For One, Am Wedded For Life), One Has To Accept The Need For Positive Government; One Has To Consider Government Action On A Sizable Scale As Desirable Rather Than As A Necessary Evil.

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.

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."

I'm Better About Things Than About People. I'm More Interested In People, But I'm Better At Ideas.

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?'

The Better A Man Is, The More Mistakes He Will Make, For The More New Things He Will Try. I Would Never Promote To A Top-level Job A Man Who Was Not Making Mistakes...otherwise He Is Sure To Be Mediocre.

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.

All Great Change In Business Has Come From Outside The Firm, Not From Inside.

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

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.

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.'

Planning Is Actually Incompatible With An Entrepreneurial Society And Economy. Planning Is The Kiss Of Death Of Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship

Almost Everybody Today Believes That Nothing In Economic History Has Ever Moved As Fast As, Or Had A Greater Impact Than, The Information Revolution. But The Industrial Revolution Moved At Least As Fast In The Same Time Span, And Had Probably An Equal Impact If Not A Greater One.

The Welfare State, Which Begun In Imperial Germany For The Truly Indigent And Disabled, Has Now Become "everybody's Entitlement" And An Increasing Burden On Those Who Produce.

Use Feedback Analysis To Identify Your Strengths. Then Go To Work On Improving Your Strengths. Identify And Eliminate Bad Habits That Hinder The Full Development Of Your Strengths. Figure Out What You Should Do And Do It. Finally, Decide What You Should Not Do.

The Enterprise That Does Not Innovate Ages And Declines. And In A Period Of Rapid Change Such As The Present, The Decline Will Be Fast.

Strong People Have Strong Weaknesses.

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'.

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.

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.

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

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

Work Is A Process, And Any Process Needs To Be Controlled. To Make Work Productive, Therefore, Requires Building The Appropriate Controls Into The Process Of Work.

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

Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Invaluable.

Project Management

One Cannot Buy, Rent Or Hire More Time. The Supply Of Time Is Totally Inelastic. No Matter How High The Demand, The Supply Will Not Go Up. There Is No Price For It. 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. All Work Takes Place In, And Uses Up Time. Yet Most People Take For Granted This Unique, Irreplaceable And Necessary Resource.

The Most Important Decisions In Organizations Are People Decisions, And Yet Only The Military, And Only Recently, Has Begun To Ask, "if We Assign This General To Lead This Base, What Do We Expect Him To Accomplish?"

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

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.

Don't Try To Innovate For The Future. Innovate For The Present!

Human Beings Need Community. If There Are No Communities Available For Constructive Ends, There Will Be Destructive, Murderous Communities... Only The Social Sector, That Is, The Nongovernmental, Nonprofit Organization, Can Create What We Now Need, Communities For Citizens... What The Dawning 21st Century Needs Above All Is Equally Explosive Growth Of The Nonprofit Social Sector In Building Communities In The Newly Dominant Social Environment, The City.

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

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.

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

Business, That's Easily Defined - It's Other People's Money.

Most Discussions Of Decision Making Assume That Only Senior Executives Make Decisions Or That Only Senior Executives' Decisions Matter. This Is A Dangerous Mistake.

Business Is Society's Change Agent.

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

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

Making A Difference

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

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'.

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.

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

That The Government's Power Under The Taft-hartley Act To Stop A Strike By Injunction So Clearly Strengthens The Hand Of The Employer-even Though It Is Used Only When A Strike Threatens The National Health, Welfare, Or Safety-is A Grave Blemish And Explains Much Of Union Resistance To The Act.

There Is No Perfect Strategic Decision. One Always Has To Pay A Price. One Always Has To Balance Conflicting Objectives, Conflicting Opinions, And Conflicting Priorities. The Best Strategic Decision Is Only An Approximation - And A Risk.

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

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

Good Intentions

Knowledge Has Become The Key Resource Of The World Economy.

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

Decision Making Is The Specific Executive Task.

Decision Making

The Organization Is, Above All, Social. It Is People.

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

With Christianity, Freedom And Equality Became The Two Basic Concepts Of Europe; They Are Themselves Europe.

Education Gives You Neither Experience Nor Wisdom.

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.

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

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.

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.

All Good Strategy Eventually Degenerates Into Work.

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

What Can I Contribute That Will Significantly Affect The Performance And The Results Of The Institution I Serve?

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

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

Knowledge Is Information That Changes Something Or Somebody - Either By Becoming Grounds For Actions, Or By Making An Individual (or An Institution) Capable Of Different Or More Effective Action.

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

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.

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.

Quality Of Character Doesn't Make A Leader, But The Lack Of It Flaws The Entire Process.

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.

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.

Innovation Opportunities Do Not Come With The Tempest But With The Rustling Of The Breeze.

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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.

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 Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

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

Organizationally What Is Required - And Evolving - Is Systems Management.

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.

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.

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

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 Manager Who Comes Up With The Right Solution To The Wrong Problem Is More Dangerous Than The Manager Who Comes Up With The Wrong Solution To The Right Problem.

Business Has Only Two Basic Functions - Marketing And Innovation.

Today Knowledge Has Power. It Controls Access To Opportunity And Advancement.

A Success That Has Outlived Its Usefulness May, In The End, Be More Damaging Than Failure.

The World Political System Is Till Based On The Concept Of The National Sovereign State. For The First Time Therefore, In Three Hundred Years Economy And Sovereignty Are Becoming Divorced From Each Other.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

The Single Minded Ones, The Monomaniacs, Are The Only True Achievers

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

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

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

People In Any Organization, Including Bureaucrats And Politicians, Are Always Attached To The Obsolete; The Obsolescent; The Things That Should Have Worked But Didn't; The Things That Once Were Productive And No Longer Are.

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

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.

Every Enterprise Is Learning And Teaching Institution. Training And Development Must Be Built Into It On All Levels, Training And Development That Never Stop.

If You Want To Predict The Future Create It.

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.

Don't Take On Things You Don't Believe In And That You Yourself Are Not Good At. Learn To Say No. Effective Leaders Match The Objective Needs Of Their Company With The Subjective Competencies. As A Result, They Get An Enormous Amount Of Things Done Fast.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Innovation Is The Specific Tool Of Entrepreneurs, The Means By Which They Exploit Change As An Opportunity For A Different Business Or A Different Service.

Erroneous Assumptions Can Be Disastrous.

The Enterprise Can Fulfill Its Human And Social Functions Only If It Prospers As A Business.

Success In The Knowledge Economy Comes To Those Who Know Themselves - Their Strengths, Their Values, And How They Best Perform.

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

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.

In The Modern Corporation The Decisive Power, That Of The Managers , Is Derived From No One But The Managers Themselves Controlled By Nobody And Nothing And Responsible To No One. It Is In The Most Literal Sense Unfounded, Unjustified, Uncontrolled And Irresponsible Power.

Political Freedom Is Neither Easy Nor Automatic, Neither Pleasant Nor Secure. It Is The Responsibility Of The Individual For The Decisions Of Society As If They Were His Own Decisions-as In Moral Truth And Accountability They Are.

Executives Owe It To The Organization And To Their Fellow Workers Not To Tolerate Nonperforming Individuals In Important Jobs.

Knowledge Is Power, Which Is Why People Who Had It In The Past Often Tried To Make A Secret Of It. In Post-capitalism, Power Comes From Transmitting Information To Make It Productive, Not From Hiding It.

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.

The Knowledge We Now Consider Knowledge Proves Itself In Action. What We Now Mean By Knowledge Is Information Effective In Action, Information Focused On Results. Results Are Outside The Person, In Society And Economy, Or In The Advancement Of Knowledge Itself. To Accomplish Anything This Knowledge Has To Be Highly Specialized.

Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities.

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

A Person Can Perform Only From Strength. One Cannot Build Performance On Weakness, Let Alone On Something One Cannot Do At All.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Trending Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Category