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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.

-Peter Drucker

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No Matter How Deeply

Peter Drucker

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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.

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Important Events

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

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Knowledge Workers

When A Resource Is Scarce, You Increase Its Yield.

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

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Do Not Believe That It Is Very Much Of An Advance To Do The Unnecessary Three Times As Fast.

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

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

The Basic Definition Of The Business And Of Its Purpose And Mission Have To Be Translated Into Objectives.

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[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.

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

Everything Must Degenerate Into Work If Anything Is To Happen.

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

Making Decisions

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

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

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

Working With People Is Difficult, But Not Impossible.

Any Time I Have Seen Someone Accomplishing Something Magnificent, They Have Been A Monomaniac With A Mission. A Single-minded Individual With A Passion.

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

No Executive Has Ever Suffered Because His Subordinates Were Strong And Effective.

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.

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

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.

What's Absolutely Unforgivable Is The Financial Benefit Top Management People Get For Laying Off People. There's No Excuse For It. No Justification. No Explanation. This Is Morally And Socially Unforgivable, And We'll Pay A Very Nasty Price.

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

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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

Asking Questions

Ignorant Masses

Asking Too Many Questions

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.

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.

[entrepreneurship] Is By No Means Hunch Or Gamble. But It Also Is Not Precisely Science. Rather, It Is Judgment.

Entrepreneurship

Focus On Opportunities, Not Problems.

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

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

Making A Difference

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Making Good Decisions Is A Crucial Skill At Every Level.

Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Invaluable.

Project Management

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

Success Always Obsoletes The Very Behavior That Achieved It.

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

Knowledge Has To Be Improved, Challenged, And Increased Constantly, Or It Vanishes.

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.

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

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

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

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

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

Our Society Has Become An Employee Society.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Keeping Promises

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.

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

We Can Say With Certainty - Or 90% Probability - That The New Industries That Are About To Be Born Will Have Nothing To Do With Information.

In The Knowledge Economy Everyone Is A Volunteer, But We Have Trained Our Managers To Manage Conscripts.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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

The Most Effective Way To Manage Change Is To Create It.

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

Making Changes To Better Appeal To Customer Is Innovation.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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