Peter F. Drucker: Trending quotes (page 8)

“We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 30

People , Learning

“The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 455

Men

“One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 169

“…the information revolution. Almost everybody is sure …that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and …that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors …The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s…did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 …Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, …it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. …the same emergence of the “super-rich” of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. …These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead.”

Peter F. Drucker

"The way ahead" Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001)
1990s and later

Lie , Change , Speed

“Top management as a function and as a structure was first developed by Georg von Siemens (1839-1901) in Germany between 1870 and 1880, when he designed and built the Deutsche Bank and made it, within a very few years, into continental Europe's leading and most dynamic financial institution.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 605

“Engineers speak half–jokingly about Murphy's Law: " If anything can go wrong, it will." But complexity stands under a second law as well. Let me call it Drucker's law: "If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time."”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 681

Law , Time

“The most dangerous and at the same time most stupid explanation of fascism is the propaganda theory. In the first place, I have never been able to find anyone who could reconcile it with the fact that right up to the fascist victory—and in Italy beyond it—literally all means of propaganda were in the hands of uncompromising enemies of fascism. There was not one widely-read newspaper but poured ridicule on Hitler and Mussolini while the Nazi and the fascist press were unread and on the verge of bankruptcy. The radio in Germany, owned by the government, issued one anti-Nazi broadside after the other. More powerful than both, the established churches used all the enormous direct influence of the pulpit and the confessional to fight fascism and Nazism.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), pp. 7-8

Stupidity , Time , Reading , Victory

“No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 28

Decision

“Sören Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith… Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful.”

Peter F. Drucker

The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition (1993)
1990s and later

Life , Death , God , Faith

“One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U. S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 539

People , Health

“The rule should be to minimize the need for people to get together to accomplish anything.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 548

People

“The citizen of today in every developed country is typically an employee. He works for one of the institutions. He looks to them for his livelihood. He looks to them for his opportunities. He looks to them for access to status and function in society, as well as for personal fulfillment and achievement.
The citizen of 1900 if employed worked for a small family-type operation; the small pop-and-mom store employing a helper or two; the family household; and so on. And of course, the great majority of people in those days, except in the most highly industrialized countries—such as Britain or Belgium—worked on the farm.
Our society has become an employee society. In the early 1900s people asked, “What do you do?””

Peter F. Drucker

Today they tend to ask, “Whom do you work for?”
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 4

People , Family , Moms , Personality

“Increasingly, politics is not about "who gets what, when, how" but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about "the right to life"…It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed…None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral.”

Peter F. Drucker

About how government can function
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Life

“A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 32

Knowledge , Country

“This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers…. the most striking growth will be in “knowledge technologists:” computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals…. They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as “professionals.” Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades.”

Peter F. Drucker

"The next society" Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001)
1990s and later

Knowledge

“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?"”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1990s and later, Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992), p. 137

People , Help

“An organization belongs on a sick list when promotion becomes more important to its people than accomplishment of their job they are in. It is sick when it is more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with taking risks, with counteracting the weaknesses of its members than with building on their strength. But it is sick also when "good human relations" become more important than performance and achievement.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 93-94

People

“The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 525

Law

“In book subjects a student can only do a student's work. All that can be measured is how well he learns, rather than how well he performs. All he can show is promise.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 144

Books , Learning

“The society of ]]organizations\\ is new-only seventy years ago employees were a small minority in every society.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 284