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The Arts Alone Give Direct Access To Experience. To Eliminate Them From Education - Or Worse, To Tolerate Them As Cultural Ornaments - Is Antieducational Obscurantism. It Is Foisted On Us By The Pedants And Snobs Of Hellenistic Greece Who Considered Artistic Performance Fit Only For Slaves.

-Peter Drucker

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The Arts Alone Give

Peter Drucker

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The Arts Alone Give Direct Access To Experience. To Eliminate Them From Education - Or Worse, To Tolerate Them As Cultural Ornaments - Is Antieducational Obscurantism. It Is Foisted On Us By The Pedants And Snobs Of Hellenistic Greece Who Considered Artistic Performance Fit Only For Slaves.

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

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?

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

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Management By Objective Works - If You Know The Objectives. Ninety Percent Of The Time You Don't.

(waste = Loss): The First Rule Of Business Is To Survive And The Guiding Principle Of Business Economics Is Not The Maximisation Of Profit, It Is The Avoidance Of Loss

Guiding Principles

No Organization Can Depend On Genius; The Supply Is Always Scarce And Unreliable. It Is The Test Of An Organization To Make Ordinary People Perform Better Than They Seem Capable Of, To Bring Out Whatever Strength There Is In Its Members, And To Use Each Person's Strength To Help All The Other Members Perform.

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

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

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

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

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

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.'

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

It Does Not Follow From The Separation Of Planning And Doing In The Analysis Of Work That The Planner And The Doer Should Be Two Different People. It Does Not Follow That The Industrial World Should Be Divided Into Two Classes Of People: A Few Who Decide What Is To Be Done, Design The Job, Set The Pace, Rhythm And Motions, And Order Others About; And The Many Who Do What And As They Are Told.

Business Is Society's Change Agent.

I'm Better About Things Than About People. I'm More Interested In People, But I'm Better At Ideas.

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.

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

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.

In Most Organizations, The Bottleneck Is At The Top Of The Bottle.

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

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

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

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

Time Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business Has Only Two Basic Functions - Marketing And Innovation.

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

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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Information Knowledge

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If You're Not Living Life On The Edge, You're Taking Up Too Much Space. The Best Way To Predict The Future Is To Create It.

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We Always Remember Best The Irrelevant.

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

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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.

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

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

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

No Financial Man Will Ever Understand Business Because Financial People Think A Company Makes Money. A Company Makes Shoes, And No Financial Man Understands That. They Think Money Is Real. Shoes Are Real.

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.

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

"value Added" Is A Meaningless Concept For A Retail Business , For A Bank, For A Life Insurance Company, And For Any Other Business Which Is Not Primarily Engaged In Manufacturing.

Insurance Companies

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.

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

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.

Although He Reputedly Hated The Label Of 'guru', Peter Drucker Was, By Any Standards, The Greatest Management Guru The World Has Yet Seen. In 1996, The Mckinsey Quarterly Journal Described Him As The 'the One Guru To Whom Other Gurus Kowtow' And Robert Heller Described Him As 'the Greatest Man In The History Of Management', Praise Indeed For A Man Who Described Himself As 'just An Old Journalist'.

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.

Innovation Is The Specific Tool Of Entrepreneurs, The Means By Which They Exploit Change As An Opportunity For A Different Business Or A Different Service. It Is Capable Of Being Presented As A Discipline, Capable Of Being Learned, Capable Of Being Practiced. Entrepreneurs Need To Search Purposefully For The Sources Of Innovation, The Changes And Their Symptoms That Indicate Opportunities For Successful Innovation. And They Need To Know And To Apply The Principles Of Successful Innovation.

Leadership Is All About Getting Results.

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.

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.

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

Culture Eats Christianity For Breakfast.

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.

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."

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.

A Business Enterprise Must Continue Beyond The Lifetime Of The Individual Or Of The Generation To Be Capable Of Producing Its Contributions To Economy And To Society.

[management] Has Authority Only As Long As It Performs.

Communication Is Always "propaganda." The Emitter Always Wants "to Get Something Across."

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 Productivity Of Work Is Not The Responsibility Of The Worker But Of The Manager.

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

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

Procrastination

Productive Life

Not To Innovate Is The Single Largest Reason For The Decline Of Existing Organizations. Not To Know How To Manage Is The Single Largest Reason For The Failure Of New Ventures.

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

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

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.

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

The Large Organization Has To Learn To Innovate, Or It Won't Survive.

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 Arts Alone Give Direct Access To Experience. To Eliminate Them From Education - Or Worse, To Tolerate Them As Cultural Ornaments - Is Antieducational Obscurantism. It Is Foisted On Us By The Pedants And Snobs Of Hellenistic Greece Who Considered Artistic Performance Fit Only For Slaves.

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

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

The Fruit Of Your Work Grows On Other People's Trees

There Are Only Two Things In A Business That Make Money - Innovation And Marketing, Everything Else Is Cost.

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

The Enterprise That Does Not Innovate Ages And Declines. And In A Period Of Rapid Change Such As The Present, The Decline Will Be Fast.

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

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

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

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

Far Too Much Reorganization Goes On All The Time. Organizitis Is Like A Spastic Colon.

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.

Succession Planning Often Results In The Selection Of A Weaker Representation Of Yourself.

I No Longer Think That Learning How To Manage People, Especially Subordinates, Is The Most Important For Executives To Learn. I Am Teaching Above All Else, How To Manage Oneself.

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

Once A Year Ask The Boss, "what Do I Or My People Do That Helps You To Do Your Job?" And "what Do I Or My People Do That Hampers You?"

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

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

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

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 Need To Manage Oneself Is Creating A Revolution In Human Affairs.

The Dilemma Of Modern Society: The Conflict Between The Need For Capital Formation At A High Rate And The Popular Condemnation Of Interest And Dividends As "unearned Income" And "capitalist," If Not As Sinful And Wicked.

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.

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

Large Organizations Cannot Be Versatile. A Large Organization Is Effective Through Its Mass Rather Than Through Its Agility. Fleas Can Jump Many Times Their Own Height, But Not An Elephant.

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

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

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

To Arrive At The Definition Of The Problem He Must Begin By Finding The 'critical Factor'. This Is The Element (or Elements) In The Situation That Has To Be Changed Before Anything Else Can Be Changed, Moved, Acted Upon.

If You Have Too Many Problems, Maybe You Should Get Out Of Business. There Is No Law That Says A Company Must Last Forever.

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.

The Purpose Of A Business Is To Create A Customer.

Loyal Customers

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.

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

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

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

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

An Organization Which Just Perpetuates Today's Level Of Vision, Excellence, And Accomplishment Has Lost The Capacity To Adapt.

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

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.

It Does Not Matter Whether The Worker Wants Responsibility Or Not, ...the Enterprise Must Demand It Of Him.

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

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

Effective Organizations Put People In Jobs In Which They Can Do The Most Good. They Place People -- And Allow People To Place Themselves -- According To Their Strengths.

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

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

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

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.

Leadership Is Defined By Results Not Attributes.

People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

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

The Fewer Data Needed, The Better The Information. And An Overload Of Information, That Is, Anything Much Beyond What Is Truly Needed, Leads To Information Blackout. It Does Not Enrich, But Impoverishes.

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.

Decision Making Is The Specific Executive Task.

Decision Making

Until We Can Manage Time, We Can Manage Nothing Else.

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

The Most Valuable Assets Of A 20th-century Company Were Its Production Equipment. The Most Valuable Assets Of A 21st-century Institution, Whether Business Or Nonbusiness, Will Be Its Knowledge, Workers, And Their Productivity.

Knowledge Workers

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Making Decisions

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

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

Knowledge Has Become The Key Resource Of The World Economy.

The Paradox Of The Prophet: His Very Success Is His Failure. The Prophet Whose Time Has Come No Longer Shocks; He Entertains.

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

We Spend A Lot Of Time Teaching Leaders What To Do. We Don't Spend Enough Time Teaching Leaders What To Stop. Half The Leaders I Have Met Don't Need To Learn What To Do. They Need To Learn What To Stop

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

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