A compilations of the Top 56 Peter Drucker Quotes.
Peter Drucker was born on November 19, 1909, and died on November 11, 2005. He was an Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author whose ideas helped to provide the intellectual and practical groundwork for the modern business corporation.
He was also a leader in the development of management education, invented the term “management by objectives and self-control,” and has been dubbed “the founder of modern management.”
Peter Drucker Quotes
- “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
2. “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
3. “Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
4. “What’s measured improves”
5. “Effectiveness must be learned.”
6. “The real achiever do one thing at a time.”
7. “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”
8. “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.”
9. “Do first things first, and second things not at all.”
10. “a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw,”
11. “Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.”
12. “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
13. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
14. “Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.”
15. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
16. “Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”
17. “If you have more than five goals, you have none.”
18. “Leadership is an achievement of trust.”
19. “Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”
20. “Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.”
21. “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.”
22. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
23. “Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. ”
24. “Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we’re right.”
25. “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.”
26. “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”
27. “You should not change yourself, but create yourself, that mean build around your strengths and removing bad habits”
28. “The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.”
29. “Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.”
30. “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
31. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
32. “Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself. The task matters, and you are a servant.”
33. “You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.”
34. “Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”
35. “Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.”
36. “Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.”
37. “Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management”
38. “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
39. “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
40. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”
41. “The critical question is not “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?
42. “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.”
43. “There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn’t.”
44. “Leaders grow; they are not made.”
45. “The essence of management is to make knowledge productive.”
46. “Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.”
47. “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.”
48. “Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.”
49. “One does not “manage” people. The task is to lead people.”
50. “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.”
51. “No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.”
52. “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.”
53. “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”
54. “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
55. “Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.”
56. “The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.”
My favorites Peter Drucker Quotes are, “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.” and “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”