Peter Drucker Quotes

Law Number XXIX: Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to their jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective results hang on about half a decade.

Business is a string of seemingly impossible problems looking for solutions. Each problem you solve creates a new barrier to entry for your next competitor.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

The challenge of any business owner is not only to keep the saw sharp, but also to know if you even have a need for such a tool.

Empirical and observational data along with a healthy dash of intuition often have to be combined as business owners begin to look outward, not inward, at what solutions they can provide to their customers.

No matter what, once the doors are open for business, the entrepreneur has no choice but to be directing multiple attacks at once - raising money, writing software, prototyping, selling, collecting, training, and marketing.

Our established businesses of hydrocarbons, energy, and petrochemicals pretty much run on their own, with their own proven leaders. This has helped me focus almost exclusively on two things: Firstly, new businesses. And secondly, institutionalising what I call the Reliance Management System.

I had a fascination with the back side of the business, and the creative process always fascinated me. Vince gave me an opportunity in '98 to sit in the production meetings. He would talk creative with me, and we had this creative rapport.

I've said it for four decades - work 'on' your business, not just 'in' your business!

You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies.

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform.

I love spreadsheets. I do all the finances. I pay the publicists. I have to compartmentalize the creative and the business, so there are sacrifices. But ultimately, I get to be the CEO of my own business.

Even when the business took a real nose-dive, you're thinking, 'OK, how are we gonna get out of this? What we gonna do? We can work harder.'

It's a lot easier to figure out how to scale something that doesn't feel like it would scale than it is to figure out what is actually gonna work. You're much better off going after something that will work that doesn't scale, then trying to figure how to scale it up, than you are trying to figure it all out.

As an entrepreneur, I like cutting to the chase and getting things done.

I have long believed the corporate world is plagued by poor capital allocation decisions.

As an entrepreneur, my problem was that I had too many ideas.

There needs to be a bigger focus on creative innovation versus business models and cash flow.

When problems confront successful leaders, they get excited about the opportunity.

Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.

Lions cannot afford to hunt mice because they literally will starve to death, even if they catch them. Lions and all large carnivores have to hunt game large enough to justify the investment, so they have to hunt antelope and zebra. Why is this important? Because most senior executives are really big on chipmunks.

Somebody asked me 'what's the job of a CEO', and there's a number of things a CEO does. What you mostly do is articulate the vision, develop the strategy, and you gotta hire people to fit the culture. If you do those three things, you basically have a company. And that company will hopefully be successful, if you have the right vision, the right strategy, and good people.

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that.

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.