A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
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.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the “naturals,” the ones who somehow know how to teach.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
The computer is a moron.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.
We can say with certainty – or 90% probability – that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
