Peter Drucker Quotes

American business consultant (1909–2005)

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.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Native Name: Peter Ferdinand Drucker

Alternative Names: Peter F. Drucker

From Wikidata (CC0)

We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45, most executives have reached the peak of their business careers, and they know it. After 20 years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are very good at their jobs. But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job. And yet they are still likely to face another 20 if not 25 years of work. That is why managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career.
There are three ways to develop a second career. The first is actually to start one. [...] The second way to prepare for the second half of your life is to develop a parallel career. [...] Finally, there are the social entrepreneurs.
[...]
There is one prerequisite for managing the second half of your life: You must begin doing so long before you enter it.

Executives may become blind to everything that is perception (i.e., event) rather than fact (i.e., after the event).

There is no inherent reason why medicines should taste horrible — but effective ones usually do. Similarly, there is no inherent reason why decisions should be distasteful — but most effective ones are.

Toshiba and Hitachi made better sets at the time, only they showed them on the Ginza in Tokyo and in the big-city department stores, making it pretty clear that farmers were not particularly welcome in such elegant surroundings. Matsushita went to the farmers and sold its televisions door-to-door, something no one in Japan had ever done before for anything more expensive than cotton pants or aprons.

Hay pocas relaciones que abarquen toda la persona de un hombre como lo hace su relación con su trabajo. Según nos informa el Génesis, el trabajo no estaba en la naturaleza original del hombre. Pero se incluyó poco después: “Ganarás el pan con el sudor de tu frente” fue tanto el castigo de Dios por la caída de Adán como su don y su bendición para hacer soportable y significativa la vida del hombre en su estado posterior a la caída. Las únicas relaciones del hombre anteriores a la que tiene con su trabajo son sus relaciones con su Creador y con su familia; y sólo ellas son más fundamentales. Y junto con ellas, la relación del hombre con su trabajo constituye la base de su vida y sus realizaciones, su sociedad civil, sus artes, su historia. (página: 345)

Restructuring a job usually means restructuring a score of jobs, moving people around, and upsetting everybody. There is one exception: the exceedingly rare, truly exceptional man for whose sake the rule should be broken.

there are only three explanations for an “indispensable man”: He is actually incompetent and can only survive if carefully shielded from demands; his strength is misused to bolster a weak superior who cannot stand on his own two feet; or his strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem if not to conceal its existence.