Peter Drucker Quotes

American business consultant (1909–2005)

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Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19 1909 – November 11 2005) was an Austrian-born American writer, management consultant and university professor. In 1943 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught at New York University and Claremont Graduate University respectively.

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Native Name: Peter Ferdinand Drucker

Alternative Names: Peter F. Drucker

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Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.

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.

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.

Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.

A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

"Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society - and especially in the economy - as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is "creative destruction.

Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.

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.

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.