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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.

-Peter Drucker

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The Real Development I've

Peter Drucker

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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.

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Understanding Our Strengths, Articulating Our Values, Knowing Where We Belong -- These Are Also Essential To Addressing One Of The Great Challenges Of Organizations: Improving The Abysmally Low Productivity Of Knowledge Workers.

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Pertinent Questions

The Knowledge We Now Consider Knowledge Proves Itself In Action. What We Now Mean By Knowledge Is Information Effective In Action, Information Focused On Results. Results Are Outside The Person, In Society And Economy, Or In The Advancement Of Knowledge Itself. To Accomplish Anything This Knowledge Has To Be Highly Specialized.

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.

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

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

Fascism Is The Result Of The Collapse Of Europe's Spiritual And Social Order... Catastrophes Broke Through The Everyday Routine Which Makes Men Accept Existing Forms, Institutions And Tenets As Unalterable Natural Laws. They Suddenly Exposed The Vacuum Behind The Facade Of Society.

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

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.

It Is More Productive To Convert An Opportunity Into Results Than To Solve A Problem - Which Only Restores The Equilibrium Of Yesterday.

Mission Defines Strategy, And Strategy Defines Structure.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Strong People Have Strong Weaknesses.

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

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

Leadership Is An Achievement Of Trust.

An Established Company Which, In An Age Demanding Innovation, Is Not Able To Innovation, Is Doomed To Decline And Extinction.

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.

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

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.

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

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The Computer Is A Moron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Single Most Important Thing To Remember About Any Enterprise Is That There Are No Results Inside Its Walls. The Result Of A Business Is A Satisfied Customer.

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.

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

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

Replace Your Pursuit Of Success With The Pursuit Of Contribution.

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

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Everything Must Degenerate Into Work If Anything Is To Happen.

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The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

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One Thing At A Time

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

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

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

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

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

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People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

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

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

The Aim Of Marketing Is To Make Selling Superfluous.

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

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."

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

Keeping Promises

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.

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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.

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

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

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Good Intentions

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

Power Relationships

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In A Rural Society Communities Are "given" For The Individual. Community Is A Fact, Whether Family Or Religion, Social Class Or Caste.

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.

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

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

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

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

A Business Is Not Defined By Its Name, Statutes, Or Articles Of Incorporation. It Is Defined By The Business Mission. Only A Clear Definition Of The Mission And Purpose Of The Organization Makes Possible Clear And Realistic Business Objectives.

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

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

Ideas Are Somewhat Like Babies - They Are Born Small, Immature, And Shapeless. They Are Promise Rather Than Fulfillment. In The Innovative Company Executives Do Not Say, "this Is A Damn-fool Idea." Instead They Ask, "what Would Be Needed To Make This Embryonic, Half-baked, Foolish Idea Into Something That Makes Sense, That Is An Opportunity For Us?"

Leadership Is More Doing Than Dash.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Knowledge Has Become The Key Economic Resource And The Dominant-and Perhaps Even The Only-source Of Competitive Advantage.

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

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.

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

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.

Conductors Do Not Know How The Oboe Does Its Work, But They Know What The Oboe Should Contribute.

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

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.

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.

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

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

To Be A Manager Requires More Than A Title, A Big Office, And Other Outward Symbols Of Rank. It Requires Competence And Performance Of A High Order.

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.

Will And Determination

Decisions Exist Only In The Present.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

People Alone Of All The Resources Can Grow And Develop.

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

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

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.

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

..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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Effective People Are Not Problem Minded; They're Opportunity-minded. They Feed Opportunities And Starve Problems. They Think Preventively.

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.

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

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.'

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

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

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

Strategy Is A Commodity, Execution Is An Art.

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

Making Good Decisions Is A Crucial Skill At Every Level.

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.

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

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

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.

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