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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.

-Peter Drucker

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Society, Community, Family Are

Peter Drucker

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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.

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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.

Every Three Or Four Years I Pick A New Subject. It May Be Japanese Art; It May Be Economics. Three Years Of Study Are By No Means Enough To Master A Subject But They Are Enough To Understand It. So For More Than 60 Years I Have Kept Studying One Subject At A Time.

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

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

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

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

I Would Hope That American Managers-indeed, Managers Worldwide-continue To Appreciate What I Have Been Saying Almost From Day One: That Management Is So Much More Than Exercising Rank And Privilege, That It Is Much More Than "making Deals." Management Affects People And Their Lives.

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Providing More Desirable Products, Services, And Customer Experiences Is Vital To The Continued Existence Of Any Business. And That Is Innovation.

Customer Experience

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

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

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.

Our Most Important Education System Is In The Employees' Own Organization.

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

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

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

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

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

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Knowledge Applied Is Productivity.

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

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

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Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

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

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

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

Trees Die From The Top”. No One Should Ever Become A Strategist Unless He Or She Is Willing To Have His Or Her Character Serve As A Model For Subordinates

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Here I Am, Fifty-eight, And I Still Don't Know What I'm Going To Be When I Grow Up.

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

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

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

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.

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

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

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

We Always Remember Best The Irrelevant.

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Replace Your Pursuit Of Success With The Pursuit Of Contribution.

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

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.

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

Absolute Size By Itself Is No Indicator Of Success And Achievement, Let Alone Of Managerial Competence. Being The Right Size Is.

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.'

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

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

The Subordinate's Job Is Not To Reform Or Reeducate The Boss, Not To Make Him Conform To What The Business Schools Or The Management Book Say Bosses Should Be Like. It Is To Enable A Particular Boss To Perform As A Unique Individual.

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.

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

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

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

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

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.

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Most Leaders Don't Need To Learn What To Do. They Need To Learn What To Stop.

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

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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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?"

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It Takes Far Less Energy To Move From First-rate Performance To Excellence Than It Does To Move From Incompetence To Mediocrity.

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

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

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

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

Culture Eats Christianity For Breakfast.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Making Good Decisions Is A Crucial Skill At Every Level.

The Pertinent Question Is Not How To Do Things Right - But How To Find The Right Things To Do, And To Concentrate Resources And Efforts On Them.

Pertinent Questions

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

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.

Listening (the First Competence Of Leadership) Is Not A Skill, It Is A Discipline. All You Have To Do Is Keep Your Mouth Shut.

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

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 Three Most Charismatic Leaders In This Century Inflicted More Suffering On The Human Race Than Almost Any Trio In History: Hitler, Stalin, And Mao. What Matters Is Not The Leader's Charisma. What Matters Is The Leader's Mission.

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