Top 500 Peter F. Drucker Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.”

— Peter F. Drucker

52. “Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

— Peter F. Drucker

53. “The most effective way to manage change is to create it.”

— Peter F. Drucker

54. “The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.”

— Peter F. Drucker

55. “Marketing and innovation make money. Everything else is a cost.”

— Peter F. Drucker

56. “Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive.”

— Peter F. Drucker

57. “Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.”

— Peter F. Drucker

58. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

— Peter F. Drucker

59. “The organization is, above all, social. It is people.”

— Peter F. Drucker

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

— Peter F. Drucker

61. “The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.”

— Peter F. Drucker

62. “Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant-and perhaps even the only-source of competitive advantage.”

— Peter F. Drucker

63. “Don’t solve problems. Pursue opportunities.”

— Peter F. Drucker

64. “The essence of management is to make knowledge productive.”

— Peter F. Drucker

65. “The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.”

— Peter F. Drucker

66. “Making changes to better appeal to customer is INNOVATION.”

— Peter F. Drucker

67. “Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service.”

— Peter F. Drucker

68. “If you have more than five goals, you have none.”

— Peter F. Drucker

69. “The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.”

— Peter F. Drucker

70. “The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.”

— Peter F. Drucker

71. “Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we’re right.”

— Peter F. Drucker

72. “The relevant question is not simply what shall we do tomorrow, but rather what shall we do today in order to get ready for tomorrow.”

— Peter F. Drucker

73. “Great wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.”

— Peter F. Drucker

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

— Peter F. Drucker

75. “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 F. Drucker

76. “What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or a service does for the customer.”

— Peter F. Drucker

77. “One can either work or meet. One cannot do both at the same time.”

— Peter F. Drucker

78. “What is the major problem? It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

— Peter F. Drucker

79. “Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something.”

— Peter F. Drucker

80. “Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.”

— Peter F. Drucker

81. “There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn’t.”

— Peter F. Drucker

82. “Knowledge applied is productivity.”

— Peter F. Drucker

83. “Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.”

— Peter F. Drucker

84. “Effective people are not problem minded; they’re opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively.”

— Peter F. Drucker

85. “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.”

— Peter F. Drucker

86. “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.”

— Peter F. Drucker

87. “We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.”

— Peter F. Drucker

88. “Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”

— Peter F. Drucker

89. “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.”

— Peter F. Drucker

90. “Leaders grow; they are not made.”

— Peter F. Drucker

91. “Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust.”

— Peter F. Drucker

92. “One does not “manage” people. The task is to lead people.”

— Peter F. Drucker

93. “Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.”

— Peter F. Drucker

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

— Peter F. Drucker

95. “More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.”

— Peter F. Drucker

96. “For new technology to replace old, it has to have at least ten times the benefit.”

— Peter F. Drucker

97. “No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.”

— Peter F. Drucker

98. “Every single social and global issue of our day is a business opportunity in disguise.”

— Peter F. Drucker

99. “The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.”

— Peter F. Drucker

100. “In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.”

— Peter F. Drucker