Peter F. Drucker Quotes
26 quotes from Peter F. Drucker on investing, entrepreneurship and motivation.
On investing
Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.
On entrepreneurship
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
Knowledge-based innovation has the longest lead time of all innovations.
You cannot predict the future, but you can create it.
Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.
Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing.
People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.
Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.
To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
On motivation
People often overestimate what they can accomplish in one year. But they greatly underestimate what they could accomplish in five years.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.