Peter F. Drucker
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was a writer, management consultant and university professor. His writing focused on management-related literature. Peter Drucker made famous the term knowledge worker and is thought to have unknowingly ushered in the knowledge economy, which effectively challenges Karl Marx's world-view of the political economy. George Orwell credits Peter Drucker as one of the only writers to predict the German-Soviet Pact of 1939.
The son of a high level civil servant in the Habsburg empire, Drucker was born in the chocolate capital of Austria, in a small village named Kaasgraben (now a suburb of Vienna, part of the 19th district, Döbling). Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, there were few opportunities for employment in Vienna so after finishing school he went to Germany, first working in banking and then in journalism. While in Germany, he earned a doctorate in International Law. The rise of Nazism forced him to leave Germany in 1933. After spending four years in London, in 1937 he moved permanently to the United States, where he became a university professor as well as a freelance writer and business guru. In 1943 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught at New York University as a Professor of Management from 1950 to 1971. From 1971 to his death he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University.
“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”
“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”
“Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”
“Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.”
“Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management”
“Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”
“To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.”
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
“This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
“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.”
“The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.”
“The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.”
“The "non-profit" institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its "product" is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their "product" is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.”
“The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader's charisma. What matters is the leader's mission.”
“It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.”
“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
“Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.”
“The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results.”
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
“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.”
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.”
“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”