Peter Drucker – 33 Quotes

33 Quotes by Peter Drucker

The computer is a moron.

– Peter Drucker

Never mind your happiness do your duty.

– Peter Drucker

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

– Peter Drucker

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

– Peter Drucker

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

– Peter Drucker

Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.

– Peter Drucker

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

– Peter Drucker

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

– Peter Drucker

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

– Peter Drucker

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

– Peter Drucker

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

– Peter Drucker

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

– Peter Drucker

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

– Peter Drucker

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.

– Peter Drucker

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

– Peter Drucker

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

– Peter Drucker

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

– Peter Drucker

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

– Peter Drucker

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

– Peter Drucker

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

– Peter Drucker

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

– Peter Drucker

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

– Peter Drucker

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.

– Peter Drucker

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

– Peter Drucker

The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

– Peter Drucker

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.

– Peter Drucker

People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

– Peter 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 Drucker

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.

– Peter 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 Drucker

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’

– Peter Drucker

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.

– Peter Drucker

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.

– Peter Drucker