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The Most Important Contribution Management Needs To Make In The 21st Century Is ... To Increase The Productivity Of Knowledge Work And The Knowledge Worker

-Peter Drucker

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The Most Important Contribution

Peter Drucker

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The Most Important Contribution Management Needs To Make In The 21st Century Is ... To Increase The Productivity Of Knowledge Work And The Knowledge Worker

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Knowledge Workers

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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.

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

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."

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

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.

Organizationally What Is Required - And Evolving - Is Systems Management.

If You Want To Predict The Future Create It.

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

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

One Of The Great Movements In My Lifetime Among Educated People Is The Need To Commit Themselves To Action. Most People Are Not Satisfied With Giving Money; We Also Feel We Need To Work.

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

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

Time Management

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Strategy Is A Commodity, Execution Is An Art.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

"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.

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.

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

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.

A Management Decision Is Irresponsible If It Risks Disaster This Year For The Sake Of A Grandiose Future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Economists Think The Poor Need Them To Tell Them That They Are Poor.

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

The Most Important, And Indeed The Truly Unique, Contribution Of Management In The 20th Century Was The Fifty-fold Increase In The Productivity Of The Manual Worker In Manufacturing. The Most Important Contribution Management Needs To Make In The 21st Century Is Similarly To Increase The Productivity Of Knowledge Work And The Knowledge Worker.

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

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

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

If You Want To Know What The Future Is, Be Part Of Its Development.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Defending Yesterday Is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

Entrepreneurship Rests On A Theory Of Economy And Society. The Theory Sees Change As Normal And Indeed As Healthy. And It Sees The Major Task In Society – And Especially In The Economy – As Doing Something Different Rather Than Doing Better What Is Already Being Done. This Is Basically What Say, Two Hundred Years Ago, Meant When He Coined The Term Entrepreneur.

This Society In Which Knowledge Workers Dominate Is In Danger Of A New "class Conflict" Between The Large Minority Of Knowledge Workers And The Majority Of Workers Who Will Make Their Livings Through Traditional Ways, Either By Manual Work... Or By Service Work. The Productivity Of Knowledge Work - Still Abysmally Low - Will Predictably Become The Economic Challenge Of The Knowledge Society. On It Will Depend The Ability Of The Knowledge Society To Give Decent Incomes, And With Them Dignity And Status, To Non Knowledge People.

Do The Right Things Instead Of Trying To Do Everything Right.

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.

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

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

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

Successful Leaders Don't Start Out Asking, 'what Do I Want To Do?' They Ask, 'what Needs To Be Done?' Then They Ask, 'of Those Things That Would Make A Difference, Which Are Right For Me?'

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.

Inside An Organization There Are Only Cost Centers. The Only Profit Center Is A Customer Whose Check Has Not Bounced.

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.

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

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

Focus On Opportunities, Not Problems.

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.

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

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

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

Business, That's Easily Defined - It's Other People's Money.

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

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.

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

There Is Nothing So Useless As Doing Efficiently That Which Should Not Be Done At All.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Important Events

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

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.'

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

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

Effective Innovations Start Small. They Are Not Grandiose. They Try To Do One Specific Thing.

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.

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

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'.

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.

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

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.

There Are Usually Half A Dozen Right Answers To What Needs To Be Done. Yet, Unless A Person Makes The Risky And Controversial Choice Of Only One, He Will Achieve Nothing.

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

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

Success? Odd As It Seems, You Will Achieve The Greates Results In Business And Career If You Drop The Word 'achievement' From Your Vocabulary And Replace It With 'contribution'.

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.

Marketing Is The Distinguishing, Unique Function Of The Business.

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

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.

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.

The New Information Technology... Internet And E-mail... Have Practically Eliminated The Physical Costs Of Communications.

Communism Is Evil. Its Driving Forces Are The Deadly Sins Of Envy And Hatred.

The Corporation Is The "master", The Employee Is The "servant". Because The Corporation Owns The Means Of Production Without Which The Employee Could Not Make A Living, The Employee Needs The Corporation More Than Vice Versa.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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?"

Never Ask Who's Right. Start Out By Asking What Is Right. And You Find That Out By Listening To Dissenting, Disagreeing Opinions.

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

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

We Now Accept The Fact That Learning Is A Lifelong Process Of Keeping Abreast Of Change. And The Most Pressing Task Is To Teach People How To Learn.

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

Entrepreneurship

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Trying To Predict The Future Is Like Trying To Drive Down A Country Road At Night With No Lights While Looking Out The Back Window.

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

We Always Remember Best The Irrelevant.

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

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

My Greatest Strength As A Consultant Is To Be Ignorant And Ask A Few Questions.

Asking Questions

Ignorant Masses

Asking Too Many Questions

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

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

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.

Decisions Exist Only In The Present.

Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

Thus, For Those Who Are Willing To Go Out Into The Field, To Look And To Listen, Changing Demographics Is Both A Highly Productive And A Highly Dependable Innovation Opportunity.

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.

Working With People Is Difficult, But Not Impossible.

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.

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

People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

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'.

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.

Leadership Is Defined By Results Not Attributes.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Suppliers And Especially Manufacturers Have Market Power Because They Have Information About A Product Or A Service That The Customer Does Not And Cannot Have, And Does Not Need If He Can Trust The Brand. This Explains The Profitability Of Brands.

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

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

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.

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.

What's Measured Improves

Mother Teresa's Numerical Results Were Not Her Greatest Contribution. Instead, She Made The World-and Especially India-conscious Of Compassion.

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

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

Managing Innovation Will Increasingly Become A Challenge To Management, And Especially To Top Management, And A Touchstone Of Its Competence.

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.

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

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.

The Individual Needs The Return To Spiritual Values, For He Can Survive In The Present Human Situation Only By Reaffirming That Man Is Not Just A Biological And Psychological Being But Also A Spiritual Being, That Is Creature, And Existing For The Purposes Of His Creator And Subject To Him.

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

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.

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

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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.

No Business Can Do Everything. Even If It Has The Money, It Will Never Have Enough Good People. It Has To Set Priorities. The Worst Thing To Do Is A Little Bit Of Everything. This Makes Sure That Nothing Is Being Accomplished. It Is Better To Pick The Wrong Priority Than None At All.

Use Feedback Analysis To Identify Your Strengths. Then Go To Work On Improving Your Strengths. Identify And Eliminate Bad Habits That Hinder The Full Development Of Your Strengths. Figure Out What You Should Do And Do It. Finally, Decide What You Should Not Do.

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

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.

Leaders Shouldn?t Attach Moral Significance To Their Ideas: Do That, And You Can?t Compromise.

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

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

Good Intentions

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

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George Bancroft

Rafael Sabatini

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