Peter Drucker

There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character.

— Peter Drucker

Effective people are not problem minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively.

— Peter Drucker

The one person to distrust is the one who never makes a mistake. Either he is a phony, or he stays with…

— Peter Drucker

Wherever an impact can be eliminated by dropping the activity that causes it, this is therefore the best-indeed the only truly good-solution.

— Peter Drucker

If you have too many problems, maybe you should get out of business. There is no law that says a company must…

— Peter Drucker

Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.

— Peter Drucker

Luck never built a business. Prosperity and growth come only to the business that systematically finds and exploits its potential.

— Peter Drucker

There's nothing so useless than executing a task efficiently when it actually never should have been executed at all.

— Peter Drucker

To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can…

— Peter Drucker

Businesses once grew by one of two ways; grass roots up, or by acquisition... Today businesses grow through alliances - all kinds…

— Peter Drucker

If war production should remain the only way out of a long-term depression, industrial society would be reduced to the choice between…

— Peter Drucker

For the social ecologist language is not "communication." It is not just "message." It is substance. It is the cement that holds…

— Peter Drucker

There is the general belief that the corporation income tax is a tax on the "rich" and on the "fat cats." But…

— Peter Drucker

We no longer even understand the question whether change is by itself good or bad, ...We start out with the axiom that…

— Peter Drucker

That the government's power under the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a strike by injunction so clearly strengthens the hand of the employer-even…

— Peter Drucker

The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never…

— Peter Drucker

The final test of greatness in a CEO is how well he chooses a successor and whether he can step aside and…

— Peter Drucker

[Entrepreneurship] is by no means hunch or gamble. But it also is not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.

— Peter Drucker

Effective organizations put people in jobs in which they can do the most good. They place people -- and allow people to…

— Peter Drucker

Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or…

— Peter Drucker

Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.

— Peter Drucker

People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things…

— Peter Drucker

A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.

— Peter Drucker

Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity…

— Peter Drucker

The job of a professional manager is not to like people. It is not to change people. It is to put their…

— Peter Drucker

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

— Peter Drucker

What people in business think they know about the customer and market is likely to be more wrong than right...the customer rarely…

— Peter Drucker

Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced.

— Peter Drucker

The talk you hear about adapting to change is not only stupid, it's dangerous. The only way you can manage change is…

— Peter Drucker

The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.

— Peter Drucker

Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but the test of their validity.

— Peter Drucker

Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.

— Peter Drucker

Mother Teresa's numerical results were not her greatest contribution. Instead, she made the world-and especially India-conscious of compassion.

— Peter Drucker

Knowledge is power. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not hiding it.

— Peter Drucker

Conductors do not know how the oboe does its work, but they know what the oboe should contribute.

— Peter Drucker

Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will be taken over by a…

— Peter Drucker

As a manager you're paid to be uncomfortable. If you're comfortable, it's a sure sign you're doing things wrong.

— Peter Drucker

More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.

— Peter Drucker

Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.

— Peter Drucker

Work is an extension of personality. It is achievement. It is one of the ways in which a person defines himself, measures…

— Peter Drucker