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Time Is The Scarcest Resource.

-Peter Drucker

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Time Is The Scarcest

Peter Drucker

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Time Is The Scarcest Resource.

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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 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.

Strong People Have Strong Weaknesses.

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.

There Is A Point Of Complexity Beyond Which A Business Is No Longer Manageable.

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

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

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

Efficiency, Which Is Doing Things Right, Is Irrelevant Until You Work On The Right Things.

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.

The Most Serious Mistakes Are Not Being Made As A Result Of Wrong Answers. The True Dangerous Thing Is Asking The Wrong Question.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

People Alone Of All The Resources Can Grow And Develop.

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.

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

An Employer Has No Business With A Man's Personality. Employment Is A Specific Contract Calling For A Specific Performance... Any Attempt To Go Beyond That Is Usurpation. It Is Immoral As Well As An Illegal Intrusion Of Privacy. It Is Abuse Of Power. An Employee Owes No "loyalty," He Owes No "love" And No "attitudes" - He Owes Performance And Nothing Else. .... The Task Is Not To Change Personality, But To Enable A Person To Achieve And To Perform.

There Are No Creeds In Mathematics.

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

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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.

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

Business Enterprise Is An Organ Of Society. There Is Only One Valid Definition Of Business Purpose: To Create A Customer.

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.

Culture Eats Christianity For Breakfast.

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.

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

Making A Difference

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

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

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

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

All Good Strategy Eventually Degenerates Into Work.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

If You Want To Predict The Future Create It.

Organizations Are No Longer Built On Force, But On Trust.

Absolute Size By Itself Is No Indicator Of Success And Achievement, Let Alone Of Managerial Competence. Being The Right Size Is.

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.

Profit Is Not A Cause But A Result-

The Most Valuable Assets Of A 20th-century Company Were Its Production Equipment. The Most Valuable Assets Of A 21st-century Institution, Whether Business Or Nonbusiness, Will Be Its Knowledge, Workers, And Their Productivity.

Knowledge Workers

The Best Plan Is Only A Plan... Unless It Degerates Into Work.

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

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

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

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.

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

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.

The Effective Executive Knows That It Is Easier To Raise The Performance Of One Leader Than It Is To Raise The Performance Of A Whole Mass. She Therefore Makes Sure She Puts Into The Leadership Position, Into The Standard-setting, The Performance-making Position The Person Who Has The Strength To Do The Outstanding Pacesetting Job. This Always Requires Focus On The One Strength Of A Person And Dismissal Of Weaknesses As Irrelevant Unless They Hamper The Full Deployment Of The Available Strength.

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

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.

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."

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

Everything Requires Time. It Is The Only Truly Universal Condition. All Work Takes Place In Time And Uses Up Time. Yet Most People Take For Granted This Unique, Irreplaceable, And Necessary Resource. Nothing Else, Perhaps, Distinguishes Effective Executives As Much As Their Tender Loving Care Of Time.

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

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

The First Step Toward Making The Worker Achieving Is To Make Work Productive.

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

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

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

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

The First Organization Structure In The Modern West Was Laid Down In The Canon Law Of The Catholic Church Eight Hundred Years Ago.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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."

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

Education Can No Longer Be The Sole Property Of The State.

Knowledge Is Information That Changes Something Or Somebody - Either By Becoming Grounds For Actions, Or By Making An Individual (or An Institution) Capable Of Different Or More Effective Action.

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

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

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.

The Basic Definition Of The Business And Of Its Purpose And Mission Have To Be Translated Into Objectives.

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

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

Entrepreneurship

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

Never Underrate The Boss! The Boss May Look Illiterate. He May Look Stupid. But There Is No Risk At All In Overrating A Boss. If You Underrate Him He Will Bitterly Resent It Or Impute To You The Deficiency In Brains And Knowledge You Imputed To Him.

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.

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

Erroneous Assumptions Can Be Disastrous.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

The Days Of The 'intuitive' Manager Are Numbered.

Leadership Is All Hype. We've Had Three Great Leaders In This Century-hitler, Stalin, And Mao.

You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure.

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.

A Business Enterprise Must Continue Beyond The Lifetime Of The Individual Or Of The Generation To Be Capable Of Producing Its Contributions To Economy And To Society.

The World Economy Is Not Yet A Community--not Even An Economic Community...yet The Existence Of The "global Shopping Center" Is A Fact That Cannot Be Undone. The Vision Of An Economy For All Will Not Be Forgotten Again.

Tomorrow Always Arrives. It Is Always Different. And Even The Mightiest Company Is In Trouble If It Has Not Worked On The Future. Being Surprised By What Happens Is A Risk That Even The Largest And Richest Company Cannot Afford, And Even The Smallest Business Need Not Run.

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

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?"

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

There Is One Qualification The Manager Cannot Acquire But Must Bring To The Task. It Is Not Genius; It Is Character.

Society, Community, Family Are All Conserving Institutions. They Try To Maintain Stability And To Prevent, Or At Least Slow Down, Change. But The Organization Of The Post-capitalist Society Of Organizations Is A Destabilizer. Because Its Function Is To Put Knowledge To Work - On Tools, Processes, And Products; On Work; On Knowledge Itself - It Must Be Organized For Constant Change.

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

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.

Business Has Only Two Basic Functions - Marketing And Innovation.

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

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

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

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

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

Education Gives You Neither Experience Nor Wisdom.

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.

Management Means, In The Last Analysis, The Substitution Of Thought For Brawn And Muscle, Of Knowledge For Folkways And Superstition, And Of Cooperation For Force. It Means The Substitution Of Responsibility For Obedience To Rank, And Of Authority Of Performance For The Authority Of Rank.

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

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.

Information Is The Manager's Main Tool, Indeed The Manager's Capital, And It Is He Who Must Decide What Information He Needs And How To Use It.

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.

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

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

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

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

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

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

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.

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

Entrepreneurship

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

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

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

Business Success

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

You Cannot Prevent A Major Catastrophe, But You Can Build An Organization That Is Battle-ready, Where People Trust One Another. In Military Training, The First Rule Is To Instill Soldiers With Trust In Their Officers - Because Without Trust, They Won't Fight.

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.

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

Management By Objective Works - If You Know The Objectives. Ninety Percent Of The Time You Don't.

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.

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

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

Keeping Promises

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We No Longer Even Understand The Question Whether Change Is By Itself Good Or Bad, ...we Start Out With The Axiom That It Is The Norm. We Do Not See Change As Altering The Order... We See Change As Being Order Itself - Indeed The Only Order We Can Comprehend Today Is A Dynamic, A Moving, A Changing One.

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

The Successful Person Places More Attention On Doing The Right Thing Rather Than Doing Things Right.

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

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

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

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.

Production Is Not The Application Of Tools To Materials, But Logic To Work.

All Companies Are Service Companies; Some Also Manufacture Products.

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

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

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.

All Great Change In Business Has Come From Outside The Firm, Not From Inside.

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

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

Objectives Are Not Fate; They Are Direction. They Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments. They Do Not Determine The Future; They Are A Means To Mobilize Resources And Energies Of The Business For The Making Of The Future.

"value Added" Is A Meaningless Concept For A Retail Business , For A Bank, For A Life Insurance Company, And For Any Other Business Which Is Not Primarily Engaged In Manufacturing.

Insurance Companies

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

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

The Computer Is A Moron.

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

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.

Follow Effective Action With Quiet Reflection.

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

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

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.

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