The Daily Drucker Quotes

“I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment.....the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“For the individual there is no society unless he has social status and function. There must be a definite functional relationship between individual life and group life. For the individual without function and status, society is irrational, incalculable and shapeless. The “rootless” individual, the outcast - for absence of social function and status casts a man from the society of his fellows - sees no society. He sees only demoniac forces, half sensible, half meaningless, half in light and half in darkness, but never predictable. They decide about his life and livelihood without the possibility of interference on his part, indeed without the possibility of understanding them. He is like a blindfolded man in a strange room playing a game of which he does not know the rules.”
― Peter Drucker, The Daily Drucker

“In the Next Society’s corporation, top management will be the company. Everything else can be outsourced.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and “atypical” from exception to “rule” and “system,” and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Stop squandering resources on obsolete businesses and free up your capable people to take advantage of new opportunities.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Or—most tricky of all—a boss whom you admire fails in the crucial duty of a boss: to support, foster, and promote capable subordinates.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“For the individual there is no society unless he has social status and function. There must be a definite functional relationship between individual life and group life. For the individual without function and status, society is irrational, incalculable and shapeless. The “rootless” individual, the outcast - for absence of social function and status casts a man from the society of his fellows - sees no society. He sees only demoniac forces, half sensible, half meaningless, half in light and half in darkness, but never predictable. They decide about his life and livelihood without the possibility of interference on his part, indeed without the possibility of his understanding them. He is like a blindfolded man in a strange room playing a game of which he does not know the rules.”
― Peter Drucker, The Daily Drucker

“For the individual there is no society unless he has social status and function.
There must be a definite functional relationship between individual life and group life.
For the individual without function and status, society is irrational, incalculable and shapeless.
The “rootless” individual, the outcast - for absence of social function and status casts a man from the society of his fellows - sees no society.
He sees only demoniac forces, half sensible, half meaningless, half in light and half in darkness, but never predictable.
They decide about his life and livelihood without the possibility of interference on his part, indeed without the possibility of understanding them.
He is like a blindfolded man in a strange room playing a game of which he does not know the rules.”
― Peter Drucker, The Daily Drucker

“All organizations must be capable of change. We need concepts and measurements that give to other kinds of organizations what the market test and profitability yardstick give to business. Those tests and yardsticks will be quite different.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“But the most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important challenge in society, economics, politics, is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities. The important thing is to identify the “future that has already happened”—and to develop a methodology for perceiving and analyzing these changes. A”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“To talk only of “benefits,” I consider irresponsible and bound to lead to disaster. And I believe in free markets, having seen far too much of the alternative. But still, for me the economic sphere is one sphere rather than the sphere. Economic considerations are restraints rather than overriding determinants. Economic wants and economic satisfactions are important but not absolutes. Above all, economic activities, economic institutions, economic rationality, are means to noneconomic (that is, human or social) ends rather than ends in themselves.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Good decision makers Know when a decision is necessary Know that the most important part of decision making is to make sure that the decision is about the right problem Know how to define the problem Don’t even think about what is acceptable until they have thought through what the right decision is Know that, in all likelihood, they will have to make compromises in the end Know that they haven’t made a decision until they build its implementation and effectiveness into it ACTION POINT: Take a predicament you are facing right now. What is the problem? Do not take any steps toward making a decision until you are sure that you have diagnosed the problem completely and correctly.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Defining the Task in Knowledge Work In knowledge work, the how only comes after the what has been answered. In manual work the task is always given. Wherever there still are domestic servants, the owner of the house tells them what to do. The machine or the assembly line programs the factory worker. But, in knowledge work, what to do becomes the first and decisive question. For knowledge workers are not programmed by the machine. They largely are in control of their own tasks and must be in control of their own tasks. For they, and only they, own and control the most expensive of the means of production—their education—and their most important tool—their knowledge. They do use other tools, of course, whether the nurse’s IV or the engineer’s computer. But their knowledge decides how these tools are being used and for what. They know what steps are most important and what methods need to be used to complete the tasks; and it is their knowledge that tells them what chores are unnecessary and should be eliminated. Work on knowledge-worker productivity therefore begins with asking the knowledge workers themselves: What is your task? What should it be? What should you be expected to contribute? and What hampers you in doing your task and should be eliminated? The how only comes after the what has been answered. ACTION POINT: Define your task as a knowledge worker by asking yourself: “What do I get paid for?” and “What should I get paid for?”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“The task of an executive is not to change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of the talents, the task is to multiply the performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Abandon what is about to be obsolete, develop a system to exploit your successes, and develop a systematic approach to innovation.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

“Management and the Liberal Arts Management is a liberal art. Management is what tradition used to call a liberal art—“liberal” because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; “art” because it deals with practice and application. Managers draw upon all of the knowledges and insights of the humanities and social sciences—on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on the physical sciences and ethics. But they have to focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results—on healing a sick patient, teaching a student, building a bridge, designing and selling a “user-friendly” software program.   ACTION POINT: What is your plan to develop yourself in the humanities and social sciences? Develop such a plan today. The New Realities”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done