Peter Drucker Quotes

Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.

One is to ensure that the war fighters and the intelligence analysts get the information that they need when they need it, in a format that's useful to them.

The rate of change and innovation occurring across the entire spectrum of society demands that a company like XL utilize the highest level of analytics and information to solve problems for our clients.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

We had to depend on other institutions to do research on our behalf. We had to use the information that already existed to craft the best practices to distribute throughout the country. And we had to do all of that in ten months.

If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, 'What are the foremost tools of power?' You will find that it is information.

How else can I manage, if I don't know what's going on out there?

The Pentagon suffers from too much Intelligence. They can't use what they get because there is too much collected. It would almost be better if they didn't have it because it's difficult to find out what's important.

… a closed world. … an almost perfect record of resisting change. … fragmented, loosely managed, and poorly coordinated. … often unable to gather intelligence about the things we care the most about. … analysts do not always tell the decision makers just how limited their information really is. … increasingly irrelevant to the new challenges presented by weapons of mass destruction. … espionage is always chancy at best. Still we have no choice but to do better.

Too often in business, only financial data is gathered - and then it is distributed only to management. Other key indicators that relate to performance areas also need to be tracked. Information on performance has to be made available to those people who can best use it - those doing the work.

One thing that will never change as a manager is that there is so much game stuff and management stuff to deal with that you want good information.

If you're going to decide to run a data-driven campaign, decision-making has to follow it.

Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.

Data isn't information, any more than fifty tons of cement is a skyscraper.

We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge.

How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.

Data is great, but strategy is better

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

It is of equal importance with the discovery of facts to know what to do with them.

We need a more diversified portfolio of change-making tools so that we don't just get so freaked out by whatever's happening in the political corner.

A computer is the most incredible tool we've ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communications center, a supercalculator, a planner, a filer and an artistic instrument all in one, just by being given new instructions, or software, to work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility of a computer.

Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues.

No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.

A general in time of war is constantly bombarded by reports both true and false; by errors arising from fear or negligence or hastiness; by disobedience born of right or wrong interpretations, of ill will; of a proper or mistaken sense of duty; of laziness; or of exhaustion; and by accident that nobody could have foreseen. In short, he is exposed to countless impressions, most of them disturbing, few of them encouraging. ... If a man were to yield to these pressures, he would never complete an operation.

Now that knowledge is taking the place of capital as the driving force in organizations worldwide, it is all too easy to confuse data with knowledge and information technology with information.