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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.

-Peter Drucker

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We Live In An

Peter Drucker

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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.

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

[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.

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

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

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

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Keeping Promises

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?"

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

"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

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

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Leadership Is An Achievement Of Trust.

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.

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

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

Decisions Exist Only In The Present.

Most Of What You Hear About Entrepreneurshi P Is All Wrong. It's Not Magic; It's Not Mysterious; And It Has Nothing To Do With Genes. It's A Discipline And, Like Any Discipline, It Can Be Learned.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

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

The World Political System Is Till Based On The Concept Of The National Sovereign State. For The First Time Therefore, In Three Hundred Years Economy And Sovereignty Are Becoming Divorced From Each Other.

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

The Computer Is A Moron.

The Most Effective Way To Manage Change Is To Create It.

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

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.

Businesses Are Not Paid To Reform Customers. They Are Paid To Satisfy Customers.

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

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

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.

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.

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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.

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.

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.

Profit For A Company Is Like Oxygen For A Person. If You Don't Have Enough Of It, You're Out Of The Game. But If You Think Your Life Is About Breathing, You're Really Missing Something.

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

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

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.

The Society Of Organizations Is New-only Seventy Years Ago Employees Were A Small Minority In Every Society.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Great Challenge To Management Today Is To Make Productive The Tremendous New Resource, The Knowledge Worker. This, Rather Than The Productivity Of The Manual Worker, Is The Key To Economic Growth And Economic Performance In Today's Society.

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

Entrepreneurship

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

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.

Strategy Is A Commodity, Execution Is An Art.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Everything Must Degenerate Into Work If Anything Is To Happen.

..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.

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

Making A Difference

Our Society Has Become An Employee Society.

An Organization Which Just Perpetuates Today's Level Of Vision, Excellence, And Accomplishment Has Lost The Capacity To Adapt.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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'.

Marketing Is Not Only Much Broader Than Selling, It Is Not A Specialized Activity At All. It Encompasses The Entire Business. It Is The Whole Business Seen From The Point Of View Of Its Final Result, That Is, From The Customer's Point Of View.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

If A Government Commission Had Worked On The Horse, You Would Have The First Horse That Could Operate Its Knee Joint In Both Directions. The Trouble Is It Couldn't Have Stood Up.

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.

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.

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

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

The Productivity Of People Requires Continuous Learning, As The Japanese Have Taught Us. It Requires Adoption In The West Of The Specific Japanese Zen Concept Where One Learns To Do Better What One Already Does Well.

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

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.

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

There Is The General Belief That The Corporation Income Tax Is A Tax On The "rich" And On The "fat Cats." But With Pension Funds Owning 30% Of American Large Business-and Soon To Own 50%-the Corporation Income Tax, In Effect, Eases The Load On Those In Top Income Brackets And Penalizes The Beneficiaries Of Pension Funds.

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.

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

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

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

Time Is The Scarcest Resource.

A Manager Is Responsible For The Application And Performance Of Knowledge.

One Can Either Work Or Meet. One Cannot Do Both At The Same Time.

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.

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

Most Of What We Call Management Consists Of Making It Difficult For People To Get Their Work Done.

Funny Inspirational

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

Trees Die From The Top”. No One Should Ever Become A Strategist Unless He Or She Is Willing To Have His Or Her Character Serve As A Model For Subordinates

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

All Companies Are Service Companies; Some Also Manufacture Products.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Profit Is Not A Cause But A Result-

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

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

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

One Cannot Hire A Hand; The Whole Man Always Comes With It.

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.

Follow Effective Action With Quiet Reflection.

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

We Do Not Need More Laws . No Country Suffers From A Shortage Of Laws. We Need A New Model .

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Listening Is Not A Skill; It Is A Discipline.

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

We Can't Make People Better By Trying To Eliminate Their Weaknesses, But We Can Help Then Perform Better By Building On Their Strengths.

Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Invaluable.

Project Management

The Aim Of Marketing Is To Make Selling Superfluous.

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

Management And Entrepreneurship Are Only Two Different Dimensions Of The Same Task. An Entrepreneur Who Does Not Learn How To Manage Will Not Last Long. A Management That Does Not Learn To Innovate Will Not Last Long.

All Earlier Pluralist Societies Destroyed Themselves Because No One Took Care Of The Common Good. They Abounded In Communities But Could Not Sustain Community, Let Alone Create It.

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

Too Many Leaders Try To Do A Little Bit Of 25 Things And Get Nothing Done. They Are Very Popular Because They Always Say Yes. But They Get Nothing Done.

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.

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.

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.

Don't Take On Things You Don't Believe In And That You Yourself Are Not Good At. Learn To Say No. Effective Leaders Match The Objective Needs Of Their Company With The Subjective Competencies. As A Result, They Get An Enormous Amount Of Things Done Fast.

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

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

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

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 Problem In My Life And Other People's Lives Is Not The Absence Of Knowing What To Do But The Absence Of Doing 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?"

An Institution Which Is Financed By A Budget - Or Which Enjoys A Monopoly Which The Customer Cannot Escape - Is Rewarded For What It Deserves Rather Than What It Earns. It Is Paid For 'good Intentions' And 'programs'. It Is Paid For Not Alienating Important Constituents Rather Than Satisfying Any One Group. It Is Misdirected By The Way It Is Being Paid Into Defining Performance And Results As What Will Produce The Budget Rather Than As What Will Produce Contribution.

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

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

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

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.

Mission Defines Strategy, And Strategy Defines Structure.

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.

Decision Making Is The Specific Executive Task.

Decision Making

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.

Business Is Society's Change Agent.

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.

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

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

Customer Experience

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

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

The Manager Who Comes Up With The Right Solution To The Wrong Problem Is More Dangerous Than The Manager Who Comes Up With The Wrong Solution To The Right Problem.

Leadership Is All About Getting Results.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

That The Government's Power Under The Taft-hartley Act To Stop A Strike By Injunction So Clearly Strengthens The Hand Of The Employer-even Though It Is Used Only When A Strike Threatens The National Health, Welfare, Or Safety-is A Grave Blemish And Explains Much Of Union Resistance To The Act.

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.

[t]hroughout The Ages To Be Educated Meant To Be Unproductive.... Our Word "school" - And Its Equivalent In All European Languages - Derives From A Greek Word Meaning "leisure.

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