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Management Quotes by Peter Drucker

79 Management quotes by Peter Drucker

All Management quotes Peter Drucker’s page

Peter Drucker says managing is more about thinking than muscle. He points out that a manager needs good character, not just clever ideas, and that teamwork is a reality, not a nice‑to‑have. He also notes that a manager’s job is to make work productive, not the worker’s.

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Manage yourself and then your company.

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So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

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The need to manage oneself is creating a revolution in human affairs.

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Organizationally what is required - and evolving - is systems management.

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The essence of management is to make knowledge productive.

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[Management] has authority only as long as it performs.

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The days of the 'intuitive' manager are numbered.

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What managers decide to stop doing is often more important than what they decide to do.

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Managers are the basic and scarcest resource of any business enterprise.

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To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and…

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Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

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Management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so.

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Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant-and perhaps even the only-source of competitive advantage.

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I no longer think that learning how to manage people, especially subordinates, is the most important for executives to learn. I am…

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In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.

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A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future.

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The manager who comes up with the right solution to the wrong problem is more dangerous than the manager who comes up…

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It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management…

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Few relationships are as critical to the business enterprise itself as the relationship to government. The manager has responsibility for this relationship…

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Few relationships are as critical to the business enterprise as the relationship to the government. Managers have responsibility for this relationship as…

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Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can…

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What's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There's no excuse for it. No justification.…

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Strategic management is not a box of tricks or a bundle of techniques. It is analytical thinking and commitment of resources to…

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Management and entrepreneurship are only two different dimensions of the same task. An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will…

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I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is…

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There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any…

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Although he reputedly hated the label of 'guru', Peter Drucker was, by any standards, the greatest management guru the world has yet…

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What is the manager's job? It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant…

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One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the…

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

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

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The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

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

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One does not "manage" people. The task is to lead people.

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Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

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Without institution there is no management. But without management there is no institution.

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You can't manage knowledge.Knowledge is between two ears and only between two ears.

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One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it.

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Management is not being brilliant. Management is being conscientious.

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More by Peter Drucker

One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U.S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate…

No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.

Results is all that separates one company from another.

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

Our society has become an employee society.

Replace your pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for…

Don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!

The critical question is not "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to…

When it rains manna from heaven, some people put up an umbrella. Others reach for a big spoon.

The enterprise can fulfill its human and social functions only if it prospers as a business.

The computer actually may have aggravated management's degenerative tendency to focus inward on costs.

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

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.