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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.

-Peter Drucker

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What Is The Major

Peter Drucker

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Building Of A Personality Beyond Its Normal Limitations.

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

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

Most Organizations Staff Their Problems & Starve Their Opportunities.

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.

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

..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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

As A Manager You're Paid To Be Uncomfortable. If You're Comfortable, It's A Sure Sign You're Doing Things Wrong.

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.

Results Is All That Separates One Company From Another.

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

Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Invaluable.

Project Management

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

Leaders Grow; They Are Not Made.

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

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

Customer Experience

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.

Elephants Have A Hard Time Adapting. Cockroaches Outlive Everything.

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

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.

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

"the Area In Which The Executive First Encounters The Challenge Of Strength Is In Staffing. The Effective Executive Fills Positions And Promotes On The Basis Of What A Man Can Do. He Does Not Make Staffing Decisions To Minimize Weaknesses But To Maximize Strength."

Through Systematic Terror, Through Indoctrination, Through Systematic Manipulation Of Stimulus, Reward, And Punishment, We Can Today Break Man And Convert Him Into Brute Animal... The First Step Toward Survival Is Therefore To Make Government Legitimate Again By Attempting To Deprive It Of These Powers... By International Action To Ban Such Powers.

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

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

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

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

Every Few Hundred Years In Western History There Occurs A Sharp Transformation. Within A Few Short Decades, Society - Its Worldview, Its Basic Values, Its Social And Political Structures, Its Art, Its Key Institutions - Rearranges Itself. We Are Currently Living Through Such A Time.

I Have No Interest In Celebrities. If All The Superrich Disappeared, The World Economy Would Not Even Notice. The Superrich Are Irrelevant To The Economy.

People Who Need Certainty Are Unlikely To Make Good Entrepreneurs.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Once A Year Ask The Boss, "what Do I Or My People Do That Helps You To Do Your Job?" And "what Do I Or My People Do That Hampers You?"

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

Management Is Not Being Brilliant. Management Is Being Conscientious.

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

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.

Every First-rate Editor I Have Ever Heard Of Reads, Edits And Rewrites Every Word That Goes Into His Publication.... Good Editors Are Not 'permissive'; They Do Not Let Their Colleagues Do 'their Thing'; They Make Sure That Everybody Does The 'paper's Thing.' A Good, Let Alone A Great Editor Is An Obsessive Autocrat With A Whim Of Iron, Who Rewrites And Rewrites, Cuts And Slashes, Until Every Piece Is Exactly The Way He Thinks It Should Have Been Done.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Adequacy Is The Enemy Of Excellence.

Capitalism As A Social Order And As A Creed Is The Expression Of The Belief In Economic Progress As Leading Toward The Freedom And Equality Of The Individual In A Free And Open Society. Marxism Expects This Society To Result From The Abolition Of Private Profit. Capitalism Expects The Free And Equal Society To Result From The Enthronement Of Private Profit As Supreme Ruler Of Social Behavior.

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

Meetings Are By Definition A Concession To Deficient Organization. For One Either Meets Or One Works.

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

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

Checking The Results Of A Decision Against Its Expectations Shows Executives What Their Strengths Are, Where They Need To Improve, And Where They Lack Knowledge Or Information.

Information Knowledge

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.

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.

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

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.

Profit Is Not The Purpose Of A Business, But Rather The Test Of Its Validity

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.

Institutions Mistake Good Intentions For Objectives. They Say "health Care"; That's An Intention, Not An Objective.

Good Intentions

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.

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

The Moment People Talk Of "implementing" Instead Of "doing," And Of "finalizing" Instead Of "finishing," The Organization Is Already Running A Fever.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Shoes Are Real. Money Is An End Result.

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

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.

Never Ask Who's Right. Start Out By Asking What Is Right. And You Find That Out By Listening To Dissenting, Disagreeing Opinions.

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

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 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

Efficiency Is Doing Better What Is Already Being Done.

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.

Our Job In Life Is To Make A Positive Difference, Not Prove We're Right.

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

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.

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

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.

Free Enterprise Cannot Be Justified As Being Good For Business. It Can Be Justified Only As Being Good For Society.

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

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

To Satisfy The Customer Is The Mission And Purpose Of Every Business.

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

Time Management

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

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

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

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.

Marketing Is The Distinguishing, Unique Function Of The Business.

The Great Mystery Isn't That People Do Things Badly But That They Occasionally Do A Few Things Well. The Only Thing That Is Universal Is Incompetence. Strength Is Always Specific! Nobody Ever Commented, For Example, That The Great Violinist Jascha Heifetz Probably Couldn't Play The Trumpet Very Well.

The Real Achiever Do One Thing At A Time.

One Thing At A Time

Look Upon Every Obstacle As Part Payment Towards Your Success.

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

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

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

Businesses Once Grew By One Of Two Ways; Grass Roots Up, Or By Acquisition... Today Businesses Grow Through Alliances - All Kinds Of Dangerous Alliances. Joint Ventures And Customer Partnerings Which, By The Way, Very Few People Understand.

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

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

Objectives Are Not Commands; They Are Commitments.

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.

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

Making A Difference

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

A Manager's Task Is To Make The Strengths Of People Effective And Their Weakness Irrelevant - And That Applies Fully As Much To The Manager's Boss As It Applies To The Manager's Subordinates.

I Find More And More Executives Less And Less Well Informed About The Outside World, If Only Because They Believe That The Data On The Computer Printouts Are Ipso Facto Information.

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

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

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

Business Success

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

Trust Is Congruence Between What You Say And What You Do.

It's Amazing How Many Things Busy People Are Doing That Never Will Be Missed.

Leadership Is Defined By Results Not Attributes.

[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.

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

Salvation By Society Failed The Most Where It Promised The Most, In The Communist Countries. But It Also Failed In The West. Practically No Government Program Enacted Since The 1950s In The Western World - Or In The Communist Countries - Has Been Successful.

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.

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

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

Innovative Efforts Should Never Report To Line Managers Charged With Responsibility For Ongoing Operations. The New Project Is An Infant And Will Remain One For The Foreseeable Future, And Infants Belong In The Nursery. The 'adults', That Is, The Executives In Charge Of Existing Businesses Or Products Will Have Neither The Time Nor Understanding For The Infant.

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

Entrepreneurship

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

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.

Political Freedom Is Neither Easy Nor Automatic, Neither Pleasant Nor Secure. It Is The Responsibility Of The Individual For The Decisions Of Society As If They Were His Own Decisions-as In Moral Truth And Accountability They Are.

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

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

Leadership Is All About Getting Results.

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

Procrastination

Productive Life

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.

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.

Nobody In The World Is As Good At Making Decisions As The Japanese.

Making Decisions

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

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

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."

Knowledge Applied Is Productivity.

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 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.

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

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

Successful Leaders Don't Start Out Asking, 'what Do I Want To Do?' They Ask, 'what Needs To Be Done?' Then They Ask, 'of Those Things That Would Make A Difference, Which Are Right For Me?'

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.

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.

We Have Only One Alternative: Either To Build A Functioning Industrial Society Or See Freedom Itself Disappear In Anarchy And Tyranny.

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

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

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.

Working With People Is Difficult, But Not Impossible.

[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.

There's No Such Thing As Knowledge Management; There Are Only Knowledgeable People. Information Only Becomes Knowledge In The Hands Of Someone Who Knows What To Do With It.

Business Is Society's Change Agent.

"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.

To Make Knowledge Productive, We Will Have To Learn To See Both Forest And Tree. We Will Have To Learn To Connect.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

We Can Ill Afford To Have Activities Conducted As "non-profit," That Is, As Activities That Devour Capital Rather Than Form It, If They Can Be Organized As Activities That Form Capital, As Activities That Make A Profit.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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