Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future.
If a manager spends more than 10 percent of his time on "human relations" the group is probably too large.
The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.
Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.
Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.
When Henry Ford said, "The customer can have a car in any color as long as it's black," he was not joking.
That knowledge has become the resource, rather than a resource, is what makes our society "post-capitalist.
It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, ...The enterprise must demand it of him.
We've spent the last 30 years focusing on the T in IT, and we'll spend the next 30 years focusing on the I.
By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.
The society of organizations is new-only seventy years ago employees were a small minority in every society.
With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe.
There are only two things in a business that make money - innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.
Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer.
The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool.
Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
As with every phenomenon of the objective universe, the first step toward understanding work is to analyze it.
They wrongly believe that good intentions move mountains. Bulldozers move mountains. But there are exceptions.
[Entrepreneurship] is by no means hunch or gamble. But it also is not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.
What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.
As a manager you're paid to be uncomfortable. If you're comfortable, it's a sure sign you're doing things wrong.
Important decisions are risky. They should be controversial. Acclamation means that nobody has done the homework.
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Morale in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance not conformance.
The enterprise, by definition, must be capable of producing more or better than all the resources that comprise it.
Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.
A fundamental responsibility of leadership is make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it, lives it.
Institutions mistake good intentions for objectives. They say "health care"; that's an intention, not an objective.
No single piece of macroeconomic advice given by the experts to their government has ever had the results predicted.
There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character.
Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced.
There's nothing so useless than executing a task efficiently when it actually never should have been executed at all.
The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.
What we need is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady and continuous.
For the first four years, no new enterprise produces profits. Even Mozart didn't start writing music until he was four.
The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.
Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change
The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.
The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.
Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system's weaknesses irrelevant.
The job of a professional manager is not to like people. It is not to change people. It is to put their strengths to work.