Quotes from Peter F. Drucker

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence

It is always futile to restore normality; "normality" is only the reality of yesterday. The job is not to impose yesterday's normal on a changed today; but to change the business, its behaviors, its attitudes, its expectations – as well as its products, its markets, and its distributive channels – to fit the new realities

a knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call "executives.

The incongruity between perceived and actual reality typically characterizes a whole industry or a whole service area. The solution, however, should again be small and simple, focused and highly specific.

More important than any one new application is the new 'materials' concept itself. It marks a shift from concern with substances to concern with structures, a shift from artisan to scientist as man's artificer, a shift from chemistry to physics as the basic discipline, and a shift, above all, from the concrete experience of the workshop to abstract mathematics, a shift from starting with what nature provides to what man wants to accomplish. -The Age of Discontinuity, 1969

A young man who has the right strength for one organization may be a total misfit in another, which from the outside looks just the same.

the best definition of "what our business is, will be, and should be," will remain a pious platitude. Energy will be used up in defending yesterday. No one will have the time, resources, or will to work on exploiting today, let alone to work on making tomorrow.

Teams fail—and the failure rate has been high—primarily because they do not impose on themselves the self-discipline and responsibility that are required precisely because of the high degree of freedom team organization gives. No task force can be "permissive" and function. This is the reason why the same young educated people who clamor for team work tend so often in reality to resist it. It makes tremendous demands on self-discipline.

The idea that growth is by itself a goal is altogether a delusion. There is no virtue in a company's getting bigger. The right goal is to become better. Growth, to be sound, should be the result of doing the right things. By itself, growth is vanity and little else.

A person's way of performing can be slightly modified, but it is unlikely to be completely changed—and certainly not easily. Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they also achieve results by working in ways that they best perform. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.

Behind the incongruity between actual and perceived reality, there always lies an element of intellectual arrogance, of intellectual rigour and dogmatism. 'It is I, not they, who know what poor people can afford', the Japanese industrialist in effect asserted. 'People behave according to economic rationality, as every good Marxist knows,' as Khrushchev implied. This explains why the incongruity is so easily exploited by innovators: they are left alone and undisturbed.

I saw no point in being the richest man in the cemetery.

It is incumbent on the people who work with them to observe them, to find out how they work, and to adapt themselves to what makes their bosses most effective. This, in fact, is the secret of "managing" the boss.

A company that is not able to attract, motivate, and hold men of talent and competence will not survive. Increasingly, this will mean attracting, motivating, and holding the knowledge worker. Unlike the manual worker of yesterday, the knowledge worker does not, however, look just for a job. He looks for a career. He looks for an opportunity.

That one can truly manage other people is by no means adequately proven. But one can always manage oneself.

Success always makes obsolete the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities. It always creates, above all, its own and different problems. Only the fairy tale ends, "They lived happily ever after.

Los grupos sociales dirigentes de la sociedad del saber serán los trabajadores del saber , ejecutivos que saben como aplicar el saber a un uso productivo, al igual que los capitalistas sabían como aplicar capital a un uso productivo: profesionales del saber, empleados del saber.

The secret is that effective executives make the strengths of the boss productive.

What is demanded of the top man is indeed a great deal. He has to accept that he no longer can be the virtuoso performer. Instead he has to become the "conductor.

The top man who concludes that his company needs to grow but who also then realizes that he does not want to change himself and his behavior has, in conscience, only one line of action open to him. He has to step aside. Even if he legally owns the company, he does not own the lives of other people. A company is not a child—and even with a human child, the time comes when the parent has to accept that the child has grown up and needs to be independent and on his own.

At one point quantity turned into quality.

Managements are paid for their judgment, but they are not being paid to be infallible. In fact, they are being paid to realize and admit that they have been wrong – especially when their admission opens up an opportunity. But this is by no means common.

expected to get the right things done.

The unexpected success is an opportunity, but it makes demands. It demands to be taken seriously. It demands to be staffed with the ablest people available, rather than with whoever we can spare. It demands seriousness and support on the part of management equal to the size of the opportunity. And the opportunity is considerable.