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Strategic Planning Is The Continuous Process Of Making Present Entrepreneurial (risk-taking) Decisions Systematically And With The Greatest Knowledge Of Their Futurity; Organizing Systematically The Efforts Needed To Carry Out These Decisions; And Measuring The Results Of These Decisions Against The Expectations Through Organized, Systematic Feedback.

-Peter Drucker

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Strategic Planning Is The

Peter Drucker

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Strategic Planning Is The Continuous Process Of Making Present Entrepreneurial (risk-taking) Decisions Systematically And With The Greatest Knowledge Of Their Futurity; Organizing Systematically The Efforts Needed To Carry Out These Decisions; And Measuring The Results Of These Decisions Against The Expectations Through Organized, Systematic Feedback.

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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.

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

Any Organisation Develops People; It Either Forms Them Or Deforms Them.

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.

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.

It's Amazing How Many Things Busy People Are Doing That Never Will Be Missed.

The Worker's Effectiveness Is Determined Largely By The Way He Is Being Managed.

Replace Your Pursuit Of Success With The Pursuit Of Contribution.

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

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

An Effective Executive Builds On Strengths - Their Own Strengths, The Strengths Of Superiors, Colleagues, Subordinates, And On The Strength Of The Situation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

People Are Effective Because They Say 'no,' Because They Say, 'this Isn't For Me.'

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

In Book Subjects A Student Can Only Do A Student's Work. All That Can Be Measured Is How Well He Learns, Rather Than How Well He Performs. All He Can Show Is Promise.

The Fundamental Reality For Every Worker, From Sweeper To Executive Vice-president, Is The Eight Hours Or So That He Spends On The Job. In Our Society Of Organizations, It Is The Job Through Which The Great Majority Has Access To Achievement, To Fulfillment, And To Community.

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

What You Have To Do And The Way You Have To Do It Is Incredibly Simple. Whether You Are Willing To Do It Is Another Matter.

Will And Determination

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.

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.

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

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.

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

What's Measured Improves

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

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.

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.

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

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

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

We Can Ill Afford To Have Activities Conducted As "non-profit," That Is, As Activities That Devour Capital Rather Than Form It, If They Can Be Organized As Activities That Form Capital, As Activities That Make A Profit.

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

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.

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

Good Intentions

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

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

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.

Strategic Management Is Not A Box Of Tricks Or A Bundle Of Techniques. It Is Analytical Thinking And Commitment Of Resources To Action. But Quantification Alone Is Not Planning. Some Of The Most Important Issues In Strategic Management Cannot Be Quantified At All.

The Task Of Leadership Is To Create An Alignment Of Strengths So Strong That It Makes The System's Weaknesses Irrelevant.

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.

We No Longer Even Understand The Question Whether Change Is By Itself Good Or Bad, ...we Start Out With The Axiom That It Is The Norm. We Do Not See Change As Altering The Order... We See Change As Being Order Itself - Indeed The Only Order We Can Comprehend Today Is A Dynamic, A Moving, A Changing One.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

What We Need Is An Entrepreneurial Society In Which Innovation And Entrepreneurship Are Normal, Steady And Continuous.

Businesses Are Not Paid To Reform Customers. They Are Paid To Satisfy Customers.

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

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

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

There Are No Creeds In Mathematics.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

If A Government Commission Had Worked On The Horse, You Would Have The First Horse That Could Operate Its Knee Joint In Both Directions. The Trouble Is It Couldn't Have Stood Up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Too Many Leaders Try To Do A Little Bit Of 25 Things And Get Nothing Done. They Are Very Popular Because They Always Say Yes. But They Get Nothing Done.

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

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."

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

There Is The General Belief That The Corporation Income Tax Is A Tax On The "rich" And On The "fat Cats." But With Pension Funds Owning 30% Of American Large Business-and Soon To Own 50%-the Corporation Income Tax, In Effect, Eases The Load On Those In Top Income Brackets And Penalizes The Beneficiaries Of Pension Funds.

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

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

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.

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

Knowledge Has Become The Key Resource Of The World Economy.

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

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.

There's Nothing So Useless Than Executing A Task Efficiently When It Actually Never Should Have Been Executed At All.

The Healthier A New Venture And The Faster It Grows, The More Financial Feeding It Requires.

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

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

Nothing Else, Perhaps, Distinguishes Effective Executives As Much As Their Tender Loving Care Of Time.

Time Management

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

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.

Some Of The Best Business And Nonprofit Ceos I've Worked With Over A Sixty-five-year Consulting Career Were Not Stereotypical Leaders. They Were All Over The Map In Terms Of Their Personalities, Attitudes, Values, Strengths, And Weaknesses.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Most Executives Have Learned That What One Postpones, One Actually Abandons ... Timing Is A Most Important Element In The Success Of Any Effort. To Do Five Years Later What Would Have Been Smart To Do Five Years Earlier, Is Almost A Sure Recipe For Frustration And Failure.

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

When The Business Grows, The Person Who Founded It Is Incredibly Busy. Rapid Growth Puts An Enormous Strain On A Business. You Outgrow Your Production Facilities. You Outgrow Your Management Capabilities.

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

A Manager Is Responsible For The Application And Performance Of Knowledge.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Efficiency, Which Is Doing Things Right, Is Irrelevant Until You Work On The Right Things.

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

Entrepreneurship

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

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

Making Good Decisions Is A Crucial Skill At Every Level.

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

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.

To Satisfy The Customer Is The Mission And Purpose Of Every Business.

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.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

Business Success

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.

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

Entrepreneurship Is “risky” Mainly Because So Few Of The So-called Entrepreneurs Know What They Are Doing.

Entrepreneurship

Defending Yesterday Is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

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.

Charisma Becomes The Undoing Of Leaders. It Makes Them Inflexible, Convinced Of Their Own Infallibility, Unable To Change

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

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

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

We Live In An Age Of Unprecedented Opportunity: If You’ve Got Ambition And Smarts, You Can Rise To The Top Of Your Chosen Profession, Regardless Of Where You Started Out.

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

To Survive And Succeed, Every Organization Will Have To Turn Itself Into A Change Agent

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

All Good Strategy Eventually Degenerates Into Work.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Entrepreneurship

Education Gives You Neither Experience Nor Wisdom.

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

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities.

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'.

There Are Two Types Of People In The Business Community: Those Who Produce Results And Those Who Give You Reasons Why They Didn't.

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

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

Spontaneity Is An Infinite Number Of Rehearsed Possibilities.

The Productivity Of People Requires Continuous Learning, As The Japanese Have Taught Us. It Requires Adoption In The West Of The Specific Japanese Zen Concept Where One Learns To Do Better What One Already Does Well.

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.

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

In The Managerial Organization, The Top People Sit In Judgment; In The Innovative Organization It Is Their Job To Encourage Ideas, No Matter How Unripe Or Crude.

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.

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

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.

Keep Your Eye On The Task, Not On Yourself. The Task Matters, And You Are A Servant

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

The Talk You Hear About Adapting To Change Is Not Only Stupid, It's Dangerous. The Only Way You Can Manage Change Is To Create It.

Fascism Is The Result Of The Collapse Of Europe's Spiritual And Social Order... Catastrophes Broke Through The Everyday Routine Which Makes Men Accept Existing Forms, Institutions And Tenets As Unalterable Natural Laws. They Suddenly Exposed The Vacuum Behind The Facade Of Society.

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

Successful People Know They Need To Get Many Things Done-and Done Effectively. Therefore, They Concentrate Their Time And Energy On Doing One Thing At A Time-and On Doing First Things Firs.

Businesses Once Grew By One Of Two Ways; Grass Roots Up, Or By Acquisition... Today Businesses Grow Through Alliances - All Kinds Of Dangerous Alliances. Joint Ventures And Customer Partnerings Which, By The Way, Very Few People Understand.

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

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.

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

More Business Decisions Occur Over Lunch And Dinner Than At Any Other Time, Yet No Mba Courses Are Given On The Subject.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Adversarial Power Relationships Only Work If You Never Have To See Or Work With The Bastards Again.

Power Relationships

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.

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.

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.

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

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

Most People Think They Know What They Are Good At. They Are Usually Wrong... And Yet, A Person Can Perform Only From Strength.

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.

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Elizabeth Blackwell

Jeremy Clarkson

Alexander Alekhine

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