Peter Drucker Quotes

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.

He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.

It's not important to get things done, it's important to get the right things done.

In book subjects a student can only do a student's work. All that can be measured is how well he learns, rather than how well he performs. All he can show is promise.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Above all, we know that an entrepreneurial strategy has more chance of success the more it starts out with the users – their utilities, their values, their realities. An innovation is a change in market or society. It produces a greater yield for the user, greater wealth-producing capacity for society, higher value or greater satisfaction. The test of an innovation is always what it does for the user. Hence, entrepreneurship always needs to be market-focused, indeed, market-driven.

The action plan is a statement of intentions rather than a commitment. It must not become a straitjacket. It should be revised often, because every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure.

The rule should be to minimize the need for people to get together to accomplish anything.

Of these denials of European tradition one is especially important: that is the refutation of the demand that the political and social order and the authority set up under it have to justify themselves as benefiting their subjects. Hardly any other concept or idea of our past is held up to so much ridicule by fascism as that of the justification of power. ‘Power is its own justification’ is regarded as self-evident. Nothing shows better how far the totalitarian revolution has already gone than the general acceptance of this new maxim throughout Europe as a matter of course... [I]t is the most startling innovation. For the last two thousand years... justification of power and authority has been the central problem of European political thought and... political history. And since Europe became Christian there has never been any other approach... than... seeking justification in the benefit which the exercise of power confers upon its subjects... Not even the most fanatical advocates of absolute monarchy would have dared to justify the sovereign otherwise.

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

This failure to ask reflects human stupidity less than it reflects human history.

2. Don’t diversify, don’t splinter, don’t try to do too many things at once. This is, of course, the corollary to the ‘do’: be focused!

The job is, however, not to set priorities. That is easy. Everybody can do it. The reason why so few executives concentrate is the difficulty of setting “posteriorities” — that is, deciding what tasks not to tackle — and of sticking to the decision.

The moment people talk of "implementing" instead of "doing," and of "finalizing" instead of "finishing," the organization is already running a fever.