Peter F. Drucker Quotes

"There is only one ethics, one set of rules of morality, one code: That of individual behavior in which the same rules apply to everyone alike."
-Peter F. Drucker

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work."
-Peter F. Drucker in Leadership quotes.

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
-Peter F. Drucker

"The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit.... This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done."
-Peter F. Drucker in Leadership quotes.

"The computer is a moron."
-Peter F. Drucker in Computers quotes.

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."
-Peter F. Drucker in Actions quotes.

"Far too many people—especially people with great expertise in one area—are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for knowledge."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."
-Peter F. Drucker in Work quotes.

"The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance."
-Peter F. Drucker

"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from."
-Peter F. Drucker in Economics quotes.

"'Management' means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force. . ."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans."
-Peter F. Drucker

"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."
-Peter F. Drucker

"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."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Stock option plans reward the executive for doing the wrong thing. Instead of asking, 'Are we making the right decision?' he asks, 'How did we close today?' It is encouragement to loot the corporation."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard."
-Peter F. Drucker

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."
-Peter F. Drucker

"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."
-Peter F. Drucker

"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."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."
-Peter F. Drucker

"The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager."
-Peter F. Drucker

"One either meets or one works."
-Peter F. Drucker

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
-Peter F. Drucker

"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."
-Peter F. Drucker

"Marketing is a fashionable term. The sales manager becomes a marketing vice president. But a gravedigger is still a gravedigger even when it is called a mortician - only the price of the burial goes up."
-Peter F. Drucker