Peter Drucker Tribute

As I begin this new venture, I must pay tribute to Peter Drucker who has inspired me on the journey of innovation and entrepreneurship. I will often return to these quotes as a source of wisdom.

• 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.
• Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
• Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
• Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
• Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
• Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
• Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
• Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
• Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
• Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
• Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
• My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
• 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.
• 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.
• Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
• Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
• The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
• The best way to predict the future is to create it.
• The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
• The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
• The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
• The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
• The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
• The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
• There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
• Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
• Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
• Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.
• 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.