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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.

-Peter Drucker

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Salvation By Society Failed

Peter Drucker

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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.

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It Is More Productive To Convert An Opportunity Into Results Than To Solve A Problem - Which Only Restores The Equilibrium Of Yesterday.

There Is No Reason To Believe That The People Who Staff The Managerial And Professional Positions In Our Service Institutions Are Any Less Qualified, Any Less Competent Or Honest, Or Any Less Hard-working Than The Men Who Manage Businesses. Conversely, There Is No Reason To Believe That Business Managers, Put In Control Of Service Institutions, Would Do Better Than The 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, We Know That They Immediately Become Bureaucrats Themselves.

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

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.

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

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.

Managing Innovation Will Increasingly Become A Challenge To Management, And Especially To Top Management, And A Touchstone Of Its Competence.

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

Important Decisions Are Risky. They Should Be Controversial. Acclamation Means That Nobody Has Done The Homework.

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

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

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.

Follow Effective Action With Quiet Reflection. From The Quiet Reflection Will Come Even More Effective Action.

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

Most Of What You Hear About Entrepreneurshi P Is All Wrong. It's Not Magic; It's Not Mysterious; And It Has Nothing To Do With Genes. It's A Discipline And, Like Any Discipline, It Can Be Learned.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

Leadership Is An Achievement Of Trust.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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."

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.

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

The Race For Quality Has No Finish Line - So Technically, It's More Like A Death March. Efficiency Is Doing Things Right; Effectiveness Is Doing The Right Things.

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

Procrastination

Productive Life

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

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

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

The First Organization Structure In The Modern West Was Laid Down In The Canon Law Of The Catholic Church Eight Hundred Years Ago.

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.

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

Making A Difference

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

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

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

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

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

Luck Never Built A Business. Prosperity And Growth Come Only To The Business That Systematically Finds And Exploits Its Potential.

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.

Marketing Is The Distinguishing, Unique Function Of The Business.

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

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.

Profitability Is The Sovereign Criterion Of The Enterprise.

The Aim Of Marketing Is To Make Selling Superfluous.

To Be Effective, Every Knowledge Worker, And Especially Every Executive, Therefore Needs To Dispose Of Time In Fairly Large Chunks. To Have Small Dribs And Drabs Of Time At His Disposal Will Not Be Sufficient Even If The Total Is An Impressive Number Of Hours.

Knowledge Workers

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.

Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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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.

Everybody Has Accepted By Now That Change Is Unavoidable. But That Still Implies That Change Is Like Death And Taxes - It Should Be Postponed As Long As Possible And No Change Would Be Vastly Preferable. But In A Period Of Upheaval, Such As The One We Are Living In, Change Is The Norm.

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

Knowledge Applied Is Productivity.

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

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.

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.

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.

Unless We Realize That The Essence Of Nazism Is Also An Attempt To Solve A Universal Problem Of Western Civilization - That Of The Industrial Society - And That The Basic Principles On Which The Nazis Base This Attempt Are Also In No Way Confined To Germany, We Do Not Know What We Fight For Or What We Fight Against... The War Is Being Fought For The Structure Of Industrial Society - Its Basic Principles, Its Purposes, And Its Institutions.

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

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

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

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

Capital Formation Is Shifting From The Entrepreneur Who Invests In The Future To The Pension Trustee Who Invests In The Past.

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.

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.

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

There Is Every Indication That The Period Ahead Will Be An Innovative One, One Of Rapid Change In Technology , Society , Economy , And Institutions .

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The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

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.

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.

Listening Is Not A Skill; It Is A Discipline.

..there Is Need For A Person To Be Generally Educated. Otherwise You Shrivel Up Much Too Soon. Whether This Means Reading The Bible (i Read The New Testament Every Few Years) Or Reading The Great 19th Century Novelists (the Greatest And Shrewdest Judge Of People And Of Society Who Ever Lived), Or Classical Philosophy (which I Cannot Read-it Puts Me To Sleep Immediately), Or History (which Is Secondary). What Matters Is That The Knowledge Worker, By The Time He Or She Reaches Middle Age, Has Developed And Nourished A Human Being Rather Than A Tax Accountant Or A Hydraulic Engineer.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

History Has Been Written Not By The Most Talented But By The Most Motivated.

It’s Up To You To Carve Out Your Place, To Know When To Change Course, And To Keep Yourself Engaged And Productive During A Work Life That May Span Some 50 Years.

The Question That Faces The Strategic Decision Maker Is Not What His Organisation Should Do Tomorrow. It Is, What Do We Have To Do Today To Be Ready For An Uncertain Tomorrow?

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

There Are Usually Half A Dozen Right Answers To What Needs To Be Done. Yet, Unless A Person Makes The Risky And Controversial Choice Of Only One, He Will Achieve Nothing.

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.

People Alone Of All The Resources Can Grow And Develop.

People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

Spontaneity Is An Infinite Number Of Rehearsed Possibilities.

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

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.

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

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

The Only Real Difference Between One Organization And Another Is The Performance Of Its People.

The Largest 100 Corporations Hold 25 Percent Of The Worldwide Productive Assets, Which In Turn Control 75 Percent Of International Trade And 98 Percent Of All Foreign Direct Investment.the Multinational Corporation...puts The Economic Decision Beyond The Effective Reach Of The Political Process And Its Decision-makers, National Governments.

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

If Something Fails Despite Being Carefully Planned, Carefully Designed, And Conscientiously Executed, That Failure Often Bespeaks Underlying Change And, With It, Opportunity.

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

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

For New Technology To Replace Old, It Has To Have At Least Ten Times The Benefit.

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

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

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

Business Has Only Two Basic Functions - Marketing And Innovation.

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

The Entrepreneur Always Searches For Change, Responds To It, And Exploits It As An Opportunity.

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

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.

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

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.

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?"

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.

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

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

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.

Production Is Not The Application Of Tools To Materials, But Logic To Work.

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.

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.

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

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

Funny Inspirational

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

You Cannot Predict The Future, But You Can Create It.

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.

Do Not Measure Your Life By Your Goals But What You Are Doing To Achieve Them.

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.

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Objectives Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

Leadership Is Defined By Results Not Attributes.

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

"plastic Moments" Are Those Periods That Overlap When The Old Has Gone But The New Has Not Yet Arrived And When The Course Of History Is More Open To Being Shaped And Steered Than Any Other Time.

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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.

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

Institutions Mistake Good Intentions For Objectives. They Say "health Care"; That's An Intention, Not An Objective.

Good Intentions

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

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.

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

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

Management And Union May Be Likened To That Serpent Of The Fables Who On One Body Had Two Heads That Fighting Each Other With Poisoned Fangs, Killed Themselves.

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

The Computer Is A Moron.

Time Is The Scarcest Resource.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Change Is The Norm; Unless An Organization Sees That Its Task Is To Lead Change, That Organization Will Not Survive.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Many Studies Of Research Scientists Have Shown That Achievement (at Least Below The Genius Level Of An Einstein, Bohr, Or A Planck) Depends Less On Ability In Doing Research Than On The Courage To Go After Opportunity.

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

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

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

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.

Leadership Is Lifting A Person's Vision To High Sights, The Raising Of A Person's Performance To A Higher Standard, The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

The "non-profit" Institution Neither Supplies Goods Or Services Not Controls. Its "product" Is Neither A Pair Of Shoes Nor An Effective Regulation. Its Product Is A Changed Human Being. The Non-profit Institutions Are Human-change Agents. Their "product" Is A Cured Patient, A Child That Learns, A Young Man Or Woman Grown Into A Self-respecting Adult; A Changed Human Life Altogether.

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."

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.

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.

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