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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.

-Peter Drucker

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Peter Drucker

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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.

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

Time Management

What's Absolutely Unforgivable Is The Financial Benefit Top Management People Get For Laying Off People. There's No Excuse For It. No Justification. No Explanation. This Is Morally And Socially Unforgivable, And We'll Pay A Very Nasty Price.

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

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

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

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.

Of Those Things That Would Make A Difference, Which Are Right For Me?

Making A Difference

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Leadership Is Defined By Results Not Attributes.

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

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

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 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.

The Enterprise Can Fulfill Its Human And Social Functions Only If It Prospers As A Business.

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.

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.

Systematic Decision Review Also Shows Executives Their Own Weaknesses, Particularly The Areas In Which They Are Simply Incompetent. In These Areas, Smart Executives Don't Make Decisions Or Take Actions. They Delegate.

Unless We Realize That The Essence Of Nazism Is Also An Attempt To Solve A Universal Problem Of Western Civilization - That Of The Industrial Society - And That The Basic Principles On Which The Nazis Base This Attempt Are Also In No Way Confined To Germany, We Do Not Know What We Fight For Or What We Fight Against... The War Is Being Fought For The Structure Of Industrial Society - Its Basic Principles, Its Purposes, And Its Institutions.

The Company Is Not And Must Never Claim To Be Home, Family, Religion, Life Or Fate For The Individual. It Must Never Interfere In His Private Life Or His Citizenship. He Is Tied To The Company Through A Voluntary And Cancellable Employment Contract, Not Through Some Mystical Or Indissoluble Bond.

The Largest 100 Corporations Hold 25 Percent Of The Worldwide Productive Assets, Which In Turn Control 75 Percent Of International Trade And 98 Percent Of All Foreign Direct Investment.the Multinational Corporation...puts The Economic Decision Beyond The Effective Reach Of The Political Process And Its Decision-makers, National Governments.

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

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.

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."

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

Asking Questions

Ignorant Masses

Asking Too Many Questions

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

Decisions Exist Only In The Present.

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.

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

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

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

Once The Facts Are Clear The Decisions Jump Out At You.

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.

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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.

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

The "non-profit" Institution Neither Supplies Goods Or Services Not Controls. Its "product" Is Neither A Pair Of Shoes Nor An Effective Regulation. Its Product Is A Changed Human Being. The Non-profit Institutions Are Human-change Agents. Their "product" Is A Cured Patient, A Child That Learns, A Young Man Or Woman Grown Into A Self-respecting Adult; A Changed Human Life Altogether.

The True Business Of Every Company Is To Make And Keep Customers.

Knowledge Has Become The Key Resource Of The World Economy.

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

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

One Has To Make A Decision When A Condition Is Likely To Degenerate If Nothing Is Done.

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

Working With People Is Difficult, But Not Impossible.

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.

By Themselves, Character And Integrity Do Not Accomplish Anything. But Their Absence Faults Everything Else.

"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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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'.

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

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

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

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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.

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

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

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

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.

Adequacy Is The Enemy Of Excellence.

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

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

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

There Is No Reason To Believe That The People Who Staff The Managerial And Professional Positions In Our Service Institutions Are Any Less Qualified, Any Less Competent Or Honest, Or Any Less Hard-working Than The Men Who Manage Businesses. Conversely, There Is No Reason To Believe That Business Managers, Put In Control Of Service Institutions, Would Do Better Than The 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, We Know That They Immediately Become Bureaucrats Themselves.

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

"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.

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.

Leadership Is An Achievement Of Trust.

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

Business Success

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

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

Profit Is Not A Cause But A Result-

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

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.

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

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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

I Have Been Saying For Many Years That We Are Using The Word 'guru' Only Because 'charlatan' Is Too Long To Fit Into A Headline.

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.

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

The Success And Ultimately The Survival Of Every Business, Large Or Small, Depends In The Last Analysis On Its Ability To Develop People. This Ability Is Not Measured By Any Of Our Conventional Yardsticks Of Economic Success; Yet, Is The Final Measurement.

The Real 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.

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.

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

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

All Good Strategy Eventually Degenerates Into Work.

Profitability Is The Sovereign Criterion Of The Enterprise.

When It Rains Manna From Heaven, Some People Put Up An Umbrella. Others Reach For A Big Spoon.

That People Even In Well Paid Jobs Choose Ever Earlier Retirement Is A Severe Indictment Of Our Organizations - Not Just Business, But Government Service, The Universities. These People Don't Find Their Jobs Interesting.

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.

If The Feudal Knight Was The Clearest Embodiment Of Society In The Early Middle Ages, And The "bourgeois" Under Capitalism, The Educated Person Will Represent Society In The Post-capitalist Society In Which Knowledge Has Become The Central Resource.

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.

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

And No Matter How Serious An Environmental Problem The Automobile Poses In Today's Big City, The Horse Was Dirtier, Smelled Worse, Killed And Maimed More People, And Congested The Streets Just As Much.

Management Is About Human Beings. Its Task Is To Make People Capable Of Joint Performance, To Make Their Strengths Effective And Their Weaknesses Irrelevant.

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

Our Society Has Become An Employee Society.

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

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

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.

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 The Customer Buys And Considers Value Is Never A Product. It Is Always Utility, That Is, What A Product Or A Service Does For The Customer.

All Companies Are Service Companies; Some Also Manufacture Products.

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

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

We All Have A Vast Number Of Areas In Which We Have No Talent Or Skill And Little Chance Of Becoming Even Mediocre. In Those Areas A Knowledge Workers Should Not Take On Work, Jobs And Assignments. It Takes Far More Energy To Improve From Incompetence To Mediocrity Than It Takes To Improve From First-rate Performance To Excellence.

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?"

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

The Individual Is The Central, Rarest, Most Precious Capital Resource Of Our Society.

If "socialism" Is Defined As "ownership Of The Means Of Production"--and This Is Both The Orthodox And The Only Rigorous Definition--then The United States Is The First Truly Socialist Country.

Socialist Countries

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.

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

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

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

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.

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.

What Is The Manager's Job? It Is To Direct The Resources And The Efforts Of The Business Toward Opportunities For Economically Significant Results. This Sounds Trite - And It Is. But Every Analysis Of Actual Allocation Of Resources And Efforts In Business That I Have Ever Seen Or Made Showed Clearly That The Bulk Of Time, Work, Attention, And Money First Goes To Problems Rather Than To Opportunities, And, Secondly, To Areas Where Even Extraordinarily Successful Performance Will Have Minimal Impact On Results.

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

Focus On Opportunities, Not Problems.

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

Entrepreneurship

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.

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

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

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.

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

One Does Not "manage" People. The Task Is To Lead People.

The Greatest Change In Corporate Culture - And The Way Business Is Being Conducted - May Be The Accelerated Growth Of Relationships Based... On Partnership.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Strength Of The Computer Lies In Its Being A Logic Machine. It Does Precisely What It Is Programed To Do. This Makes It Fast And Precise. It Also Makes It A Total Moron; For Logic Is Essentially Stupid.

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

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

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.

We've Spent The Last 30 Years Focusing On The T In It, And We'll Spend The Next 30 Years Focusing On The I.

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

Making Good Decisions Is A Crucial Skill At Every Level.

Everybody Has Accepted By Now That Change Is Unavoidable. But That Still Implies That Change Is Like Death And Taxes - It Should Be Postponed As Long As Possible And No Change Would Be Vastly Preferable. But In A Period Of Upheaval, Such As The One We Are Living In, Change Is The Norm.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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

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.

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

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Only Thing We Know About The Future Is That It Will Be Different.

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.

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.

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