23 Peter F. Drucker Quotes on Management

Peter F. Drucker quotes on management

9. That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organizations -- not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting. -- The Shape of Things to Come: An Interview with Peter F. Drucker Leader to Leader, No. 1 (Summer 1996)

12. I would hope that American managers--indeed, managers worldwide--continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than 'making deals.' Management affects people and their lives. -- Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995)

19. A manager's task is to make the strengths of people effective and their weakness irrelevant--and that applies fully as much to the manager's boss as it applies to the manager's subordinates. -- Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992)

20. The subordinate's job is not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual. -- Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992)

21. Keep the boss aware. Bosses, after all, are held responsible by their own bosses for the performance of their subordinates. They must be able to say: 'I know what Anne [or John] is trying to do.' -- Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992)

22. Never underrate the boss! The boss may look illiterate. He may look stupid. But there is no risk at all in overrating a boss. If you underrate him he will bitterly resent it or impute to you the deficiency in brains and knowledge you imputed to him. -- Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992)

23. Once a year ask the boss, 'What do I or my people do that helps you to do your job?' and 'What do I or my people do that hampers you?' -- Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992)

25. Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, 'This is a damn-fool idea.' Instead they ask, 'What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?' -- The Frontiers of Management (1986)

26. All economic activity is by definition 'high risk.' And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow. -- Innovations and Entrepreneurship (1985)

28. [human types needed for top management tasks] ...the 'thought man' ...the 'action man' ...the 'people man' ...the 'front man' ...Yet those four temperaments are almost never found in one person. ...The one-man top management job is a major reason why business fail to grow. -- Management: Tasks Responsibilities Practices (1974)

30. Morale in an organization does not mean that 'people get along together'; the test is performance not conformance. -- The Effective Executive (1966)

43. An organization is 'sick' -- when promotion becomes more important to its people than accomplishment of their job -- when it is more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with taking risks -- and with counteracting the weaknesses of its members than with building on their strength -- and when good human relations become more important than performance and achievement. ...The moment people talk of 'implementing' instead of 'doing,' and of 'finalizing' instead of 'finishing,' the organization is already running a fever. Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

44. A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths. -- The Practice of Management (1954)

47. It does not follow from the separation of planning and doing in the analysis of work that the planner and the doer should be two different people. It does not follow that the industrial world should be divided into two classes of people: a few who decide what is to be done, design the job, set the pace, rhythm and motions, and order others about; and the many who do what and as they are told. -- The Practice of Management (1954)

49. --A manager sets objectives--A manager organizes--A manager motivates and communicates--A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures--A manager develops people. The Practice of Management (1954)

57. What the worker needs is to see the plant as if he were a manager. Only thus can he see his part, from his part he can reach the whole. This 'seeing' is not a matter of information, training courses, conducted plant tours, or similar devices. What is needed is the actual experience of the whole in and through the individual's work. -- The New Society (1950)

60. In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers, is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power. -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

71. Management is doing things right, Leadership is doing the right things!

77. At least once every five years every form should be put on trial for its life.

78. If only for esthetic reasons, I am not overfond of the term 'Bottom-Up Management.'

79. [Management is] an integrating discipline of human values and conduct, of social order and intellectual inquiry, [a discipline that] feeds off economics, psychology, mathematics, political theory, history, and philosophy. In short, management is a liberal art...

86. What is the point of spending such huge sums to bring a 200-lb.-body downtown when all you want of it is its eight-and-a-half pound brain?

87. The World According to Peter Drucker Jack Beatty, The Free Press, 1998