Quotes from Peter F. Drucker

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

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

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.

Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.

And nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old

Act or do not act, but do not hedge.

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.

In every success story, you will find someone who has made a courageous decision.

Nobody can predict the future; the idea is to have a firm grasp of the present.

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.

Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.

Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

If there is any one "secret" of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.