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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.

-Peter Drucker

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The Great Challenge To

Peter Drucker

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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.

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More From Peter Drucker

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

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

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.

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

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.

A Person Can Perform Only From Strength. One Cannot Build Performance On Weakness, Let Alone On Something One Cannot Do At All.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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?

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

Good Intentions

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.

If A Business Is To Be Considered A Continuous Process, Instead Of A Series Of Disjointed Stop-and-go Events, Then The Economic Universe In Which A Business Operates-and All The Major Events Within It-must Have Rhyme, Rhythm, Or Reason.

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

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.

The Customer Rarely Buys What The Business Thinks It Sells Him.

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.

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.

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

One Does Not Start With Facts. One Starts With Opinions.

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

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

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

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.

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

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 Fruit Of Your Work Grows On Other People's Trees

Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities.

Listening Is Not A Skill; It Is A Discipline.

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

(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

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

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

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

Teaching 23-year-olds In An Mba Programme Strikes Me As Largely A Waste Of Time. They Lack The Background Of Experience. You Can Teach Them Skills - Accounting And What Have You - But You Can't Teach Them Management.

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

People Who Don't Take Risks Generally Make About Two Big Mistakes A Year. People Who Do Take Risks Generally Make About Two Big Mistakes A Year.

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

Power Relationships

Whenever Anything Is Being Accomplished, It Is Being Done, I Have Learned, By A Monomaniac With A Mission.

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

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

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

Miracles Are Great, But They're So Damn Unpredictable.

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

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

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

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?"

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

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.

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

Focus On Opportunities, Not Problems.

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

Whenever You See A Successful Business, Someone Once Made A Courageous Decision.

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

..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.

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

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

[the Masses] ... Must Turn Their Hopes Toward A Miracle. In The Depths Of Their Despair Reason Cannot Be Believed, Truth Must Be False, And Lies Must Be Truth. "higher Bread Prices," "lower Bread Prices," "unchanged Bread Prices" Have All Failed. The Only Hope Lies In A Kind Of Bread Price Which Is None Of These, Which Nobody Has Ever Seen Before, And Which Belies The Evidence Of One's Reason.

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

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

The One To Distrust Is The Person Who Never Makes A Mistake, Never Commits A Blunder, Never Fails In What He Tries To Do. Either He Is A Phony, Or He Stays With The Safe, The Tried And The Trivial.

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.

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

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

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

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.

"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 Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Will Have To Learn To Lead People Rather Then To Contain Them.

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.

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

Time Is The Scarcest Resource.

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.

Marketing Is The Distinguishing, Unique Function Of The Business.

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

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

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

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

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.

No Decision Has Been Made Unless Carrying It Out In Specific Steps Has Become Someone's Work Assignment And Responsibility.

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

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 Purpose Of A Business Is To Create A Customer.

Loyal Customers

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

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 Most Critical Case In A Corporation, Especially A Big One, Is When Everything Goes Well, When You Have Accomplished Your Objectives. When The Temptation Is To Work Twice As Hard Instead Of Saying, "we Have Accomplished Our Objectives, We Have To Think Again."

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

In All Recorded History There Has Not Been One Economist Who Has Had To Worry About Where The Next Meal Would Come From.

Objectives Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments.

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.

Knowledge People And Service People Learn The Most When They Teach .

Leadership Is An Achievement Of Trust.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?"

It Is Willingness Of People To Give Of Themselves Over And Above The Demands Of The Job That Distinguishes The Great From The Merely Adequate.

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

Capitalism As A Social Order And As A Creed Is The Expression Of The Belief In Economic Progress As Leading Toward The Freedom And Equality Of The Individual In A Free And Open Society. Marxism Expects This Society To Result From The Abolition Of Private Profit. Capitalism Expects The Free And Equal Society To Result From The Enthronement Of Private Profit As Supreme Ruler Of Social Behavior.

They Wrongly Believe That Good Intentions Move Mountains. Bulldozers Move Mountains. But There Are Exceptions.

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.

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

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.

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'.

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

Business Is Society's Change Agent.

Success Always Obsoletes The Very Behavior That Achieved It.

Making Changes To Better Appeal To Customer Is Innovation.

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

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.

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.

Sören Kierkegaard Has Another Answer: Human Existence Is Possible As Existence Not In Despair, As Existence Not In Tragedy; It Is Possible As Existence In Faith... Faith Is The Belief That In God The Impossible Is Possible, That In Him Time And Eternity Are One, That Both Life And Death Are Meaningful.

As To The Idea That Advertising Motivates People, Remember The Edsel.

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

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

Increasingly, Politics Is Not About "who Gets What, When, How" But About Values, Each Of Them Considered To Be Absolute. Politics Is About "the Right To Life"...it Is About The Environment. It Is About Gaining Equality For Groups Alleged To Be Oppressed...none Of These Issues Is Economic. All Are Fundamentally Moral.

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.

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

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

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 Most Efficient Way To Produce Anything Is To Bring Together Under One Management As Many As Possible Of The Activities Needed To Turn Out The Product.

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.

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

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

The Basic Economic Resource - The Means Of Production - Is No Longer Capital, Nor Natural Resources, Nor Labor. It Is And Will Be Knowledge.

If General Perception Changes From Seeing The Glass As 'half-full' To Seeing It As 'half Empty' There Are Major Innovative Opportunities.

When A Subject Becomes Totally Obsolete We Make It A Required Course.

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.

Spontaneity Is An Infinite Number Of Rehearsed Possibilities.

The Single Minded Ones, The Monomaniacs, Are The Only True Achievers

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

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

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

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

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 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 Monomaniac Is Unlikely To Succeed. Most Leave Only Their Bleached Bones In The Roadless Desert. But The Rest Of Us, With Our Multiple Interests Instead Of A Single Mission, Are Certain To Fail And Have No Impact At All.

For The Social Ecologist Language Is Not "communication." It Is Not Just "message." It Is Substance. It Is The Cement That Holds Humanity Together. It Creates Community And Communication. ...social Ecologists Need Not Be "great" Writers; But They Have To Be Respectful Writers, Caring Writers.

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.

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

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.

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

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

As A Manager You're Paid To Be Uncomfortable. If You're Comfortable, It's A Sure Sign You're Doing Things Wrong.

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

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

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

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

Adequacy Is The Enemy Of Excellence.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Leadership Is More Doing Than Dash.

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

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

Checking The Results Of A Decision Against Its Expectations Shows Executives What Their Strengths Are, Where They Need To Improve, And Where They Lack Knowledge Or Information.

Information Knowledge

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.

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

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.

Nobody Can Predict The Future; The Idea Is To Have A Firm Grasp Of The Present.

The More Successful The Unit, The More Difficult It Is To Make Sure That The Large Company Doesn't Put The Same Expectations On It As It Does For The Rest Of The Company. When It's A New Venture, Whether It's Outside Or Inside The Business, It's A Child. And You Don't Put A 40-pound Pack On A 6-year-old's Back When You Take Her Hiking.

Ideas Are Like Frog Eggs: You've Got To Lay A Thousand To Hatch One.

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.

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

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

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.

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.

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.

People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

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

Time Management

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

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

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

One Either Meets Or One Works.

When A Resource Is Scarce, You Increase Its Yield.

In The Western Tradition, We Have Focused On Teaching As A Skill And Forgotten What Socrates Knew: Teaching Is A Gift, Learning Is A Skill.

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