Background Image

...

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.

-Peter Drucker

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In The Political, The

Peter Drucker

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Peter Drucker

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 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.

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.

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.

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?"

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

The Real Development I've Seen Of People In Organizations, Especially In Big Ones, Comes From Their Being Volunteers In A Nonprofit Organization - Where You Have Responsibility, You See Results, And You Quickly Learn What Your Values Are. There Is No Better Way To Understand Your Strengths And Discover Where You Belong Than To Volunteer In A Nonprofit. That Is Probably The Great Opportunity For The Social Sector - And Especially In Its Relationship To Business.

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.

Sören Kierkegaard Has Another Answer: Human Existence Is Possible As Existence Not In Despair, As Existence Not In Tragedy; It Is Possible As Existence In Faith... Faith Is The Belief That In God The Impossible Is Possible, That In Him Time And Eternity Are One, That Both Life And Death Are Meaningful.

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.

Success Always Obsoletes The Very Behavior That Achieved It.

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

No Single Piece Of Macroeconomic Advice Given By The Experts To Their Government Has Ever Had The Results Predicted.

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

Never Underrate The Boss! The Boss May Look Illiterate. He May Look Stupid. But There Is No Risk At All In Overrating A Boss. If You Underrate Him He Will Bitterly Resent It Or Impute To You The Deficiency In Brains And Knowledge You Imputed To Him.

Entrepreneurs Believe That Profit Is What Matters Most In A New Enterprise. But Profit Is Secondary. Cash Flow Matters Most.

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

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.

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

Results Are Obtained By Exploiting Opportunities, Not By Solving Problems.

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

We've Spent The Last 30 Years Focusing On The T In It, And We'll Spend The Next 30 Years Focusing On The I.

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.

The Purpose Of A Business Is To Create A Customer.

Loyal Customers

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

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

There Is Nothing So Useless As Doing Efficiently That Which Should Not Be Done At All.

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.

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

Making A Difference

Customers Pay Only For What Is Of Use To Them And Gives Them Value. Nothing Else Constitutes Quality.

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

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.

People Alone Of All The Resources Can Grow And Develop.

Culture Eats Christianity For Breakfast.

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

Strong People Have Strong Weaknesses.

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.

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.

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

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

Adequacy Is The Enemy Of Excellence.

We Will Have To Learn To Lead People Rather Then To Contain Them.

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

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

We Have Only One Alternative: Either To Build A Functioning Industrial Society Or See Freedom Itself Disappear In Anarchy And Tyranny.

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

Decision Making Is The Specific Executive Task.

Decision Making

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

To Improve Communications, Work Not On The Utter, But The Recipient.

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

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.

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 Successful Person Places More Attention On Doing The Right Thing Rather Than Doing Things Right.

Unless Strategy Evaluation Is Performed Seriously And Systematically, And Unless Strategists Are Willing To Act On The Results, Energy Will Be Used Up Defending Yesterday.

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

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

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.

To Make The Future Demands Courage. It Demands Work. But It Also Demands Faith.

We Now Accept The Fact That Learning Is A Lifelong Process Of Keeping Abreast Of Change. And The Most Pressing Task Is To Teach People How To Learn.

Nobody In The World Is As Good At Making Decisions As The Japanese.

Making Decisions

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

Funny Inspirational

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.

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 Monomaniac Is Unlikely To Succeed. Most Leave Only Their Bleached Bones In The Roadless Desert. But The Rest Of Us, With Our Multiple Interests Instead Of A Single Mission, Are Certain To Fail And Have No Impact At All.

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

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

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.

If War Production Should Remain The Only Way Out Of A Long-term Depression, Industrial Society Would Be Reduced To The Choice Between Suicide Through Total War Or Suicide Through Total Depression.

Concentration Is The Key To Economic Results. No Other Principle Of Effectiveness Is Violated As Constantly Today As The Basic Principle Of Concentration.... Our Motto Seems To Be, "let's Do A Little Bit Of Everything."

Most Innovators Are Successful To The Extent To Which They Define Risks And Confine Them.

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.

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

As With Every Phenomenon Of The Objective Universe, The First Step Toward Understanding Work Is To Analyze It.

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.

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

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

An Employer Has No Business With A Man's Personality... The Task Is Not To Change Personality, But To Enable A Person To Achieve And To Perform.

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

In Todays Economy, The Most Important Resource Is No Longer Labor, Capital Or Land; It Is Knowledge

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.

The More Successful The Unit, The More Difficult It Is To Make Sure That The Large Company Doesn't Put The Same Expectations On It As It Does For The Rest Of The Company. When It's A New Venture, Whether It's Outside Or Inside The Business, It's A Child. And You Don't Put A 40-pound Pack On A 6-year-old's Back When You Take Her Hiking.

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

The Greatest Challenge To Organizations Is The Balance Between Continuity And Change. You Need Both. At Different Times, The Balance Is Slightly More Over Here, Or Slightly More Over There, But You Need Both. And Balance Is Basically The Greatest Task In Leadership. Organizations Have To Have Continuity, And Yet If There Is Not Enough New Challenge, Not Enough Change, They Become Empty Bureaucracies, Awfully Fast.

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

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.

A Business Is Not Defined By Its Name, Statutes, Or Articles Of Incorporation. It Is Defined By The Business Mission. Only A Clear Definition Of The Mission And Purpose Of The Organization Makes Possible Clear And Realistic Business Objectives.

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

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

Marketing Is The Distinguishing, Unique Function Of The Business.

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

You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure.

There Are No Creeds In Mathematics.

Entrepreneurship Rests On A Theory Of Economy And Society. The Theory Sees Change As Normal And Indeed As Healthy. And It Sees The Major Task In Society – And Especially In The Economy – As Doing Something Different Rather Than Doing Better What Is Already Being Done. This Is Basically What Say, Two Hundred Years Ago, Meant When He Coined The Term Entrepreneur.

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

Spontaneity Is An Infinite Number Of Rehearsed Possibilities.

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

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

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

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

The Only Industries That Function Well Are The Industries That Take Responsibility For Training. The Japanese, You Know, Assume That When You First Come To Work You Know Absolutely Nothing. School Isn't Preparation For Work And Never Was.

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.

Knowledge Applied Is Productivity.

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

Since We Live In An Age Of Innovation, A Practical Education Must Prepare A Man For Work That Does Not Yet Exist And Cannot Yet Be Clearly Defined.

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.

It Is Willingness Of People To Give Of Themselves Over And Above The Demands Of The Job That Distinguishes The Great From The Merely Adequate.

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.

Do First Things First, And Second Things Not At All.

The Leader Sees Leadership As Responsibility Rather Than As Rank And Privilege.

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

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

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

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

It Has Been Said, And Only Half In Jest, That A Tough, Professionally Led Union Is A Great Force For Improving Management Performance. It Forces The Manager To Think About What He Is Doing And To Be Able To Explain His Actions And Behavior.

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

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

Management Is About Human Beings. Its Task Is To Make People Capable Of Joint Performance, To Make Their Strengths Effective And Their Weaknesses Irrelevant.

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

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

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

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.

What's Measured Improves

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.

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.

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.

We All Have A Vast Number Of Areas In Which We Have No Talent Or Skill And Little Chance Of Becoming Even Mediocre. In Those Areas A Knowledge Workers Should Not Take On Work, Jobs And Assignments. It Takes Far More Energy To Improve From Incompetence To Mediocrity Than It Takes To Improve From First-rate Performance To Excellence.

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.

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.

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

Executives Do Many Things In Addition To Making Decisions. But Only Executives Make Decisions. The First Managerial Skill Is, Therefore, The Making Of Effective Decisions.

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.

Management And Entrepreneurship Are Only Two Different Dimensions Of The Same Task. An Entrepreneur Who Does Not Learn How To Manage Will Not Last Long. A Management That Does Not Learn To Innovate Will Not Last Long.

There Is The Risk You Cannot Afford To Take, And There Is The Risk You Cannot Afford Not To Take.

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

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

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

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

Keeping Promises

Profitability Is The Sovereign Criterion Of The Enterprise.

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.

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

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.

There Is A Great Need For A New Approach, New Methods And New Tools In Teaching, Man's Oldest And Most Reactionary Craft. There Is Great Need For A Rapid Increase In The Productivity Of Learning. There Is, Above All, Great Need For Methods That Will Make The Teacher Effective And Multiply His Or Her Efforts And Competence. Teaching Is, In Fact, The Only Traditional Craft In Which We Have Not Yet Fashioned The Tools That Make An Ordinary Person Capable Of Superior Performance. In This Respect, Teaching Is Far Behind Medicine, Where The Tools First Became Available A Century Or More Ago.

Economists Talk About Profit Motive, But Nothing Motivates Modern Man More Than A Chance To Avoid Taxes!

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

Decisions Exist Only In The Present.

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.

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.

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.

Accept The Fact That We Have To Treat Almost Anybody As A Volunteer.

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

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.

Conductors Do Not Know How The Oboe Does Its Work, But They Know What The Oboe Should Contribute.

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

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

The Single Most Important Thing To Remember About Any Enterprise Is That There Are No Results Inside Its Walls. The Result Of A Business Is A Satisfied Customer.

Making Changes To Better Appeal To Customer Is Innovation.

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

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

Education Gives You Neither Experience Nor Wisdom.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Business Success

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

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

Unless The Power Of The Corporation Can Be Organized On An Accepted Principle Of Legitimacy, It Will Be Taken Over By A Central Government

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

Procrastination

Productive Life

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

Objectives Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments.

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.

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

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.

Whenever You See A Successful Business, Someone Once Made A Courageous Decision.

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

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

Good Intentions

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.

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.

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

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.

(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

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

Trending Author

Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Florence Nightingale

Category