Quotes About Organization

Restructuring a job usually means restructuring a score of jobs, moving people around, and upsetting everybody. There is one exception: the exceedingly rare, truly exceptional man for whose sake the rule should be broken.

Setting a posteriority is also unpleasant. Every posteriority is somebody else's top priority. It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then to hedge by trying to do "just a little bit" of everything else as well. This makes everybody happy. The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatever gets done.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If there is one point on which all authorities on Japan are in agreement, it is that Japanese institutions, whether business or government agencies, make decisions by consensus. The Japanese, we are told, debate a proposed decision throughout the organization until there is agreement on it. And only then do they make the decision.

Executives of necessity live and work within an organization. Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside, the inside may blind them to the true reality.

Concept of the Corporation.

An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.

He knows that the test of organization is not genius. It is its capacity to make common people achieve uncommon performance.

Drucker highlights two common ingredients: preparation with a clear purpose in mind ("why are we having this meeting?") and disciplined follow-up.

Effectiveness as an executive demands doing certain—and fairly simple—things.

Effective executives know where their time goes.

Now the effectiveness of the individual depends increasingly on his or her ability to be effective in an organization, to be effective as an executive.

The first two practices gave them the knowledge they needed. The next four helped them convert this knowledge into effective action. The last two ensured that the whole organization felt responsible and accountable.

3. Individual self-development in large measure depends on the focus on contributions. The man who asks of himself, "What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?" asks in effect, "What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?" 4.

Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events.

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These apparently low-level decisions are extremely important in a knowledge-based organization.

The Functions of the Executive, that organizations are held together by information rather than by ownership or command.

Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work - on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself - it must be organized for constant change. It must be organized for innovation.

The worst kind of replacement planning is the search for a "crown prince." A crown prince either has a legal right to succeed; or else nomination is likely to destroy him. No matter how carefully concealed, picking a crown prince is an overt act which the whole organization very rapidly perceives. And then all the other possible contenders unite against the crown prince and work to bring him down—and they usually succeed.

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