Inspirational and Motivational Quotes by Peter F. Drucker

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909-2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist” (Wikipedia). He is widely considered to be the father of “modern management” and influenced management thinking like no one else. Brian Tracy often refers to him in his books and audio programs.

These quotes are not only great for if you are a management consultant or an entrepreneur. If you read them again you will notice that most quotes apply to much more than only management.

Change

• “Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.”
• “Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.”
• “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

Decisions and Taking Action

• “Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
• “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.”
• “Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”
• “Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.”
• “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
• “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.”
• “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.”

Efficiency

• “Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.”
• “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
• “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

Learning and Improvement

• “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”
• “Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.”
• “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”
• “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”

Management and Leadership

• “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
• “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”
• “Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.”
• “Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.”
• “No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”
• “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
• “Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”
• “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I”. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I”. They don’t think “I”. They think “we”; they think “team”. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

Predicting the Future

• “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
• “Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.”
• “The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.”

And Some More Classics

• “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”
• “We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.”
• “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”
• “What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that’s another matter.”
• “In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time – literally – substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”