Top 500 Peter F. Drucker Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Don’t try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!”

— Peter F. Drucker

252. “A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine.”

— Peter F. Drucker

253. “Results is all that separates one company from another.”

— Peter F. Drucker

254. “Management is not being brilliant. Management is being conscientious.”

— Peter F. Drucker

255. “Once the facts are clear the decisions jump out at you.”

— Peter F. Drucker

256. “Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”

— Peter F. Drucker

257. “Management has authority only as long as it performs.”

— Peter F. Drucker

258. “Follow effective action with quiet reflection.”

— Peter F. Drucker

259. “The person who will make the greatest contribution to a company is the mature person-and you cannot have maturity if you have no life or interest outside the job.”

— Peter F. Drucker

260. “It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.”

— Peter F. Drucker

261. “To make the future demands courage. It demands work. But it also demands faith.”

— Peter F. Drucker

262. “Systematic change requires a willingness to look on change as an opportunity.”

— Peter F. Drucker

263. “Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done. They are very popular because they always say yes. But they get nothing done.”

— Peter F. Drucker

264. “We can’t make people better by trying to eliminate their weaknesses, but we can help then perform better by building on their strengths.”

— Peter F. Drucker

265. “You must accept that if the computer is a tool, it is the job of tool user to know what to use it for.”

— Peter F. Drucker

266. “Yet there is nothing more dangerous than to be premature in exploiting a change in perception.”

— Peter F. Drucker

267. “Look upon every obstacle as part payment towards your success.”

— Peter F. Drucker

268. “The worker’s effectiveness is determined largely by the way he is being managed.”

— Peter F. Drucker

269. “In the Western tradition, we have focused on teaching as a skill and forgotten what Socrates knew: teaching is a gift, learning is a skill.”

— Peter F. Drucker

270. “Look at government programs for the past fifty years. Every single one – except warfare – achieved the exact opposite of its announced goal.”

— Peter F. Drucker

271. “Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.”

— Peter F. Drucker

272. “It is commonly believed that innovations create changes – but few ever do. Successful innovations exploit changes that have already happened.”

— Peter F. Drucker

273. “Executives do many things in addition to making decisions. But only executives make decisions. The first managerial skill is, therefore, the making of effective decisions.”

— Peter F. Drucker

274. “People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.”

— Peter F. Drucker

275. “No one has ever failed to find the facts they are looking for.”

— Peter F. Drucker

276. “The critical factor of a problem is the element that has to be changed before anything else can be changed.”

— Peter F. Drucker

277. “Entrepreneurs see change as the norm and as healthy. Usually, they do not bring about the change themselves. But – and this defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

— Peter F. Drucker

278. “Most innovators are successful to the extent to which they define risks and confine them.”

— Peter F. Drucker

279. “Effective organizations put people in jobs in which they can do the most good. They place people – and allow people to place themselves – according to their strengths.”

— Peter F. Drucker

280. “Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.”

— Peter F. Drucker

281. “Without institution there is no management. But without management there is no institution.”

— Peter F. Drucker

282. “What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter.”

— Peter F. Drucker

283. “The most probable assumption is that no currently working ‘business theory’ will be valid 10 years hence.”

— Peter F. Drucker

284. “Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.”

— Peter F. Drucker

285. “I’m better about things than about people. I’m more interested in people, but I’m better at ideas.”

— Peter F. Drucker

286. “We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.”

— Peter F. Drucker

287. “Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills – accounting and what have you – but you can’t teach them management.”

— Peter F. Drucker

288. “A well-managed plant, I soon learned, is a quiet place. A factory that is “dramatic,” a factory in which the “epic of industry” is unfolded before the visitor’s eyes, is poorly managed. A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine.”

— Peter F. Drucker

289. “They wrongly believe that good intentions move mountains. Bulldozers move mountains. But there are exceptions.”

— Peter F. Drucker

290. “If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.”

— Peter F. Drucker

291. “Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.”

— Peter F. Drucker

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

— Peter F. Drucker

293. “Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.”

— Peter F. Drucker

294. “Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.”

— Peter F. Drucker

295. “Successful people know they need to get many things done-and done effectively. Therefore, they concentrate their time and energy on doing one thing at a time-and on doing first things firs.”

— Peter F. Drucker

296. “As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and “atypical” from exception to “rule” and “system,” and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.”

— Peter F. Drucker

297. “Ideas are like frog eggs: you’ve got to lay a thousand to hatch one.”

— Peter F. Drucker

298. “The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle age, soured, cynical, unproductive.”

— Peter F. Drucker

299. “There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.”

— Peter F. Drucker

300. “Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation.”

— Peter F. Drucker