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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.

-Peter Drucker

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We No Longer Even

Peter Drucker

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Some Of The Best Business And Nonprofit Ceos I've Worked With Over A Sixty-five-year Consulting Career Were Not Stereotypical Leaders. They Were All Over The Map In Terms Of Their Personalities, Attitudes, Values, Strengths, And Weaknesses.

If A Business Is To Be Considered A Continuous Process, Instead Of A Series Of Disjointed Stop-and-go Events, Then The Economic Universe In Which A Business Operates-and All The Major Events Within It-must Have Rhyme, Rhythm, Or Reason.

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

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

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

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

Knowledge Workers

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Our Society Has Become An Employee Society.

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

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.

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

There Is Every Indication That The Period Ahead Will Be An Innovative One, One Of Rapid Change In Technology , Society , Economy , And Institutions .

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

"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

With Christianity, Freedom And Equality Became The Two Basic Concepts Of Europe; They Are Themselves Europe.

People Are Effective Because They Say 'no,' Because They Say, 'this Isn't For Me.'

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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

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.

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

Customer Experience

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.'

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Many Studies Of Research Scientists Have Shown That Achievement (at Least Below The Genius Level Of An Einstein, Bohr, Or A Planck) Depends Less On Ability In Doing Research Than On The Courage To Go After Opportunity.

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

Knowledge Is Power, Which Is Why People Who Had It In The Past Often Tried To Make A Secret Of It. In Post-capitalism, Power Comes From Transmitting Information To Make It Productive, Not From Hiding It.

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.

Because Its Purpose Is To Create A Customer, The Business Enterprise Has Two - And Only These Two — Basic Functions: Marketing And Innovation. Marketing And Innovation Produce Results; All The Rest Are 'costs'.

No One Learns As Much About A Subject As One Who Is Forced To Teach 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.

When Henry Ford Said, "the Customer Can Have A Car In Any Color As Long As It's Black," He Was Not Joking.

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

Yet There Is Nothing More Dangerous Than To Be Premature In Exploiting A Change In Perception.

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

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

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.

Profitability Is The Sovereign Criterion Of The Enterprise.

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

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

Business Success

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

Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Invaluable.

Project Management

We Can Say With Certainty - Or 90% Probability - That The New Industries That Are About To Be Born Will Have Nothing To Do With Information.

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

Entrepreneurship

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

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.

Success In The Knowledge Economy Comes To Those Who Know Themselves - Their Strengths, Their Values, And How They Best Perform.

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

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

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.

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

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

Defending Yesterday Is Far More Risky Than Making Tomorrow.

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.

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.

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

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 Purpose Of A Business Is To Create A Customer.

Loyal Customers

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

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.

No Institution Can Possibly Survive If It Needs Geniuses Or Supermen To Manage It. It Must Be Organized In Such A Way As To Be Able To Get Along Under A Leadership Composed Of Average Human Beings.

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

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.

Increasingly, Politics Is Not About "who Gets What, When, How" But About Values, Each Of Them Considered To Be Absolute. Politics Is About "the Right To Life"...it Is About The Environment. It Is About Gaining Equality For Groups Alleged To Be Oppressed...none Of These Issues Is Economic. All Are Fundamentally Moral.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

"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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Charisma Becomes The Undoing Of Leaders. It Makes Them Inflexible, Convinced Of Their Own Infallibility, Unable To Change

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.

You Must Accept That If The Computer Is A Tool, It Is The Job Of Tool User To Know What To Use It For.

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

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

The Manager Is A Servant. His Master Is The Institution He Manages And His First Responsibility Must Therefore Be To It.

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

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

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.

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.

Successful Careers Are Not Planned. They Develop When People Are Prepared For Opportunities Because They Know Their Strengths, Their Method Of Work, And Their Values. Knowing Where One Belongs Can Transform An Ordinary Person - Hardworking And Competent But Otherwise Mediocre - Into An Outstanding Performer.

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.

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.

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.

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

Working With People Is Difficult, But Not Impossible.

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 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.

Profit Is Not A Cause But A Result-

Your First And Foremost Job As A Leader Is To Take Charge Of Your Own Energy And Then Help To Orchestrate The Energy Of Those Around You.

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

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.

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

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

The Essence Of Management Is To Make Knowledge Productive.

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

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

Time Management

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Young Knowledge Worker Whose Job Is Too Small To Challenge And Test His Abilities Either Leaves Or Declines Rapidly Into Premature Middle Age, Soured, Cynical, Unproductive.

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

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

To Succeed In This New World, We Will Have To Learn, First, Who We Are. Few People, Even Highly Successful People, Can Answer The Questions, Do You Know What You're Good At? Do You Know What You Need To Learn So That You Get The Full Benefit Of Your Strengths? Few Have Even Asked Themselves These Questions.

People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

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

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.

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

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

Erroneous Assumptions Can Be Disastrous.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

To Survive And Succeed, Every Organization Will Have To Turn Itself Into A Change Agent

One Either Meets Or One Works.

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.

Don't Try To Innovate For The Future. Innovate For The Present!

I Think The Growth Industry Of The Future In This Country And The World Will Soon Be The Continuing Education Of Adults. ...i Think The Educated Person Of The Future Is Somebody Who Realizes The Need To Continue To Learn. That Is The New Definition And It Is Going To Change The World We Live In And Work In.

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

The 1st Question The Effective Decision-maker Asks Is: 'is This A Generic Situation Or An Exception?'

Quality In A Product Or Service Is Not What The Supplier Puts In. It Is What The Customer Gets Out And Is Willing To Pay For. A Product Is Not Quality Because It Is Hard To Make And Costs A Lot Of Money, As Manufacturers Typically Believe. This Is Incompetence. Customers Pay Only For What Is Of Use To Them And Gives Them Value. Nothing Else Constitutes Quality.

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.

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.

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

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.

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

[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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities.

The Aim Of Marketing Is To Make Selling Superfluous.

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

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.

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

When The Business Grows, The Person Who Founded It Is Incredibly Busy. Rapid Growth Puts An Enormous Strain On A Business. You Outgrow Your Production Facilities. You Outgrow Your Management Capabilities.

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

In A Few Hundred Years, When The History Of Our Time Will Be Written From A Long-term Perspective, It Is Likely That The Most Important Event Historians Will See Is Not Technology, Not The Internet, Not E-commerce. It Is An Unprecedented Change In The Human Condition. For The First Time - Literally - Substantial And Rapidly Growing Numbers Of People Have Choices. For The First Time, They Will Have To Manage Themselves. And Society Is Totally Unprepared For It.

Important Events

Profit 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.

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

(waste = Loss): The First Rule Of Business Is To Survive And The Guiding Principle Of Business Economics Is Not The Maximisation Of Profit, It Is The Avoidance Of Loss

Guiding Principles

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

Without Institution There Is No Management. But Without Management There Is No Institution.

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

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.

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."

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

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

Entrepreneurship

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.

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

Nothing Is Less Productive Than To Make More Efficient What Should Not Be Done At All.

Procrastination

Productive Life

The Experience Of The Human Race Indicates Strongly That The Only Person In Abundant Supply Is The Universal Incompetent.

There Are No Creeds In Mathematics.

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.

Every Success Creates New Opportunities. So Does Every Failure.

New Opportunity

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

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

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

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.

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