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Peter Drucker

Articles

  • The Shape of Things to Come   view details
    "We are now evolving toward structures in which rank means responsibility but not authority. And in which your job is not to command but to persuade."
  • My Life as a Knowledge Worker   view details
    "The leading management thinker describes seven personal experiences that taught him how to grow, to change, and to age--without becoming a prisoner of the past"
  • The Relentless Contrarian   view details
    what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There's no excuse for it. No justification. No explanation. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we'll pay a very nasty price.
  • Knowledge workers are the new capitalists   view details
    "knowledge workers are highly mobile within their specialism. They think nothing of moving from one university, one company or one country to another, as long as they stay within the same field of knowledge. There is a lot of talk about trying to restore knowledge workers' loyalty to their employing organisation, but such efforts will get nowhere. Knowledge workers may have an attachment to an organisation and feel comfortable with it, but their primary allegiance is likely to be to their specialised branch of knowledge."
  • Six Drucker Questions that Simplify a Complex Age   view details
    "What does the customer value? This “may be the most important question,” Drucker advised. “Yet it is the one least often asked.” This insight is especially relevant in an age where customers have more power and choice than ever before. ... But today, when knowledge work is predominant, tasks can be far more difficult to define. There is often no specific way for a knowledge worker to tackle an assignment. He or she typically has enormous discretion over what steps to take (and which ones not to take), and in what order to take them..."

Author Quotes

  • Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.

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  • The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.

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    Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

  • what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There's no excuse for it. No justification. No explanation. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we'll pay a very nasty price.

    View details

    The Relentless Contrarian

  • It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.

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    Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

  • 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.

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    Managing for the Future

  • 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.

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    Managing in a Time of Great Change

  • Almost everybody today believes that nothing in economic history has ever moved as fast as, or had a greater impact than, the Information Revolution. But the Industrial Revolution moved at least as fast in the same time span, and had probably an equal impact if not a greater one.

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  • In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.

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  • Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't.

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

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All quotes by Peter Drucker

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