Peter Drucker Quotes

Any man who goes into anything in life and does it better than the average will have a successful life. If he does it worse than the average, his life will not be successful. And no business can exist in which success cannot be won on that basis.

We all have levels of performance.

Well, I don't know about the dizzy height, but I always thought they were going to be pretty big.

Past performance speaks a tremendous amount about one's ability and likelihood for success.

These managers all know their onions and cut their cloth accordingly.

Success means your options multiply. Size increases complexity, and complexity can confuse vision.

The Oscar or the Emmy says you've reached a level of competence in this business, and I would love to have one.

In any business that you pursue, if you belong at the top, and you're perceived as having that caliber, and you do qualify, then it's something that you want to hold on to.

It used to get my back up because people would only say 'he does well for his size' and it's like, forget the size, I do well because I do well.

A proven leader always has a proven track record.

Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.

To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and performance of a high order.

If you aim to be big, you will be big. And that's not a pun about my size.

Set a goal, measure it, change if you need to, keep going after the goal.

Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.

All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don' t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.

Personal and organizational effectiveness is proportionate to the strength of leadership.

Everything within a half-a-minute or a half-an-inch is gold, silver, bronze or nothing.

An accomplished man to his fingertips.

If I could be really competent, that goes such a long way toward things, because the majority of things are not competent. If I can be competent, and have moments of originality, that's all I would ask for.

The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.

Efficiency is anything that scores.

It doesn't matter how many times you fail. It doesn't matter how many times you almost get it right. No-one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you. All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

Sydney: I can do a lot of things, Adrian. And—at the risk of sounding egotistical —I mean, well, I can do a lot of pretty awesome things that most people can’t." Adrian: “Don’t I know it. You can change a tire in ten minutes while speaking Greek.” Sydney: “Five minutes.

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.