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The Great Mystery Isn't That People Do Things Badly But That They Occasionally Do A Few Things Well. The Only Thing That Is Universal Is Incompetence. Strength Is Always Specific! Nobody Ever Commented, For Example, That The Great Violinist Jascha Heifetz Probably Couldn't Play The Trumpet Very Well.

-Peter Drucker

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The Great Mystery Isn't

Peter Drucker

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The Great Mystery Isn't That People Do Things Badly But That They Occasionally Do A Few Things Well. The Only Thing That Is Universal Is Incompetence. Strength Is Always Specific! Nobody Ever Commented, For Example, That The Great Violinist Jascha Heifetz Probably Couldn't Play The Trumpet Very Well.

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There Is No Perfect Strategic Decision. One Always Has To Pay A Price. One Always Has To Balance Conflicting Objectives, Conflicting Opinions, And Conflicting Priorities. The Best Strategic Decision Is Only An Approximation - And A Risk.

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

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

What's Measured Improves

There's No Such Thing As Knowledge Management; There Are Only Knowledgeable People. Information Only Becomes Knowledge In The Hands Of Someone Who Knows What To Do With It.

(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

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

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

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

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

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

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

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

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

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

One Reason For The Tremendous Increase In Health-care Costs In The U.s. Is Managerial Neglect Of The "hotel Services" By The People Who Dominate The Hospital, Such As Doctors And Nurses.

It Is Better To Pick The Wrong Priority Than None At All.

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

Culture Eats Christianity For Breakfast.

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

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

The Most Important Decisions In Organizations Are People Decisions, And Yet Only The Military, And Only Recently, Has Begun To Ask, "if We Assign This General To Lead This Base, What Do We Expect Him To Accomplish?"

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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 Commitment Is Made, There Are Only Promises And Hopes... But No Plans.

Keeping Promises

Executives Owe It To The Organization And To Their Fellow Workers Not To Tolerate Nonperforming Individuals In Important Jobs.

Every Organization Has To Prepare For The Abandonment Of Everything It Does.

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

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.

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

The Aim Of Marketing Is To Make Selling Superfluous.

The Better A Man Is The More Mistakes Will He Make – For The More New Things He Will Try.

There Is A Great Need For A New Approach, New Methods And New Tools In Teaching, Man's Oldest And Most Reactionary Craft. There Is Great Need For A Rapid Increase In The Productivity Of Learning. There Is, Above All, Great Need For Methods That Will Make The Teacher Effective And Multiply His Or Her Efforts And Competence. Teaching Is, In Fact, The Only Traditional Craft In Which We Have Not Yet Fashioned The Tools That Make An Ordinary Person Capable Of Superior Performance. In This Respect, Teaching Is Far Behind Medicine, Where The Tools First Became Available A Century Or More Ago.

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

Every Few Hundred Years In Western History There Occurs A Sharp Transformation. Within A Few Short Decades, Society - Its Worldview, Its Basic Values, Its Social And Political Structures, Its Art, Its Key Institutions - Rearranges Itself. We Are Currently Living Through Such A Time.

Your First And Foremost Job As A Leader Is To Take Charge Of Your Own Energy And Then Help To Orchestrate The Energy Of Those Around You.

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

Marketing And Innovation Produce Results; All The Rest Are Costs.

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

Customer Experience

The Final Test Of Greatness In A Ceo Is How Well He Chooses A Successor And Whether He Can Step Aside And Let The Successor Run The Company.

Quality In A Product Or Service Is Not What The Supplier Puts In. It Is What The Customer Gets Out And Is Willing To Pay For. A Product Is Not Quality Because It Is Hard To Make And Costs A Lot Of Money, As Manufacturers Typically Believe. This Is Incompetence. Customers Pay Only For What Is Of Use To Them And Gives Them Value. Nothing Else Constitutes Quality.

If War Production Should Remain The Only Way Out Of A Long-term Depression, Industrial Society Would Be Reduced To The Choice Between Suicide Through Total War Or Suicide Through Total Depression.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

You Can't Manage Knowledge.knowledge Is Between Two Ears And Only Between Two Ears.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Leadership Is More Doing Than Dash.

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

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

Innovation Requires Us To Systematically Identify Changes That Have Already Occurred In A Business - In Demographics, In Values, In Technology Or Science - And Then To Look At Them As Opportunities. It Also Requires Something That Is Most Difficult For Existing Companies To Do: To Abandon Rather Than Defend Yesterday.

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.

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.

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 Person Who Will Make The Greatest Contribution To A Company Is The Mature Person-and You Cannot Have Maturity If You Have No Life Or Interest Outside The Job.

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

Entrepreneurship

Business Has Only Two Basic Functions - Marketing And Innovation.

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.

Spontaneity Is An Infinite Number Of Rehearsed Possibilities.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Leadership Is An Achievement Of Trust.

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

Plans Are Only Good Intentions Unless They Immediately Degenerate Into Hard Work.

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

The Purpose Of A Business Is To Create A Customer.

Loyal Customers

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

Meetings Are A Symptom Of Bad Organization. The Fewer Meetings The Better.

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.

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

There Are No Creeds In Mathematics.

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

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

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.

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

Strong People Have Strong Weaknesses.

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

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.

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

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.

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

We Always Remember Best The Irrelevant.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Entrepreneurship

If A Manager Spends More Than 10 Percent Of His Time On "human Relations" The Group Is Probably Too Large.

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

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

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

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.

One Either Meets Or One Works.

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.

What Managers Decide To Stop Doing Is Often More Important Than What They Decide To Do.

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.

We Can Say With Certainty - Or 90% Probability - That The New Industries That Are About To Be Born Will Have Nothing To Do With Information.

The Young Knowledge Worker Whose Job Is Too Small To Challenge And Test His Abilities Either Leaves Or Declines Rapidly Into Premature Middle Age, Soured, Cynical, Unproductive.

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.

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

Unless A Decision Has Degenerated Into Work, It Is Not A Decision; It Is At Best A Good Intention.

Good Intentions

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.

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

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

Through Systematic Terror, Through Indoctrination, Through Systematic Manipulation Of Stimulus, Reward, And Punishment, We Can Today Break Man And Convert Him Into Brute Animal... The First Step Toward Survival Is Therefore To Make Government Legitimate Again By Attempting To Deprive It Of These Powers... By International Action To Ban Such Powers.

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

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

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

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

Time Is The Scarcest Resource.

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

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

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.'

Of All The Decisions An Executive Makes, None Is As Important As The Decisions About People, Because They Determine The Performance Capacity Of The Organization.

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

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

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.

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

Capitalism Is Being Attacked Not Because It Is Inefficient Or Misgoverned But Because It Is Cynical. And Indeed A Society Based On The Assertion That Private Vices Become Public Benefits Cannot Endure, No Matter How Impeccable Its Logic, No Matter How Great Its Benefits.

What Is The Major Problem? It Is Fundamentally The Confusion Between Effectiveness And Efficiency That Stands Between Doing The Right Things And Doing Things Right. There Is Surely Nothing Quite So Useless As Doing With Great Efficiency What Should Not Be Done At All.

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

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.

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.

To Make Knowledge Productive, We Will Have To Learn To See Both Forest And Tree. We Will Have To Learn To Connect.

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

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

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

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.

You Cannot Build Performance On Weaknesses. You Can Build Only On Strengths.

Defending Yesterday Is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

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

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.

Decision Making Is The Specific Executive Task.

Decision Making

Profitability Is The Sovereign Criterion Of The Enterprise.

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.

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

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

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

Strategy Is A Commodity, Execution Is An Art.

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

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

..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.

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

Do First Things First, And Second Things Not At All.

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.

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

True Marketing Starts...with The Customer, His Demographics, His Realities, His Needs, His Values. It Does Not Ask, "what Do We Want To Sell?" It Asks, "what Does The Customer Want To Buy?"

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.

The Computer Is A Moron.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Most Innovators Are Successful To The Extent To Which They Define Risks And Confine Them.

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

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

People In Any Organization, Including Bureaucrats And Politicians, Are Always Attached To The Obsolete; The Obsolescent; The Things That Should Have Worked But Didn't; The Things That Once Were Productive And No Longer Are.

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