Top Quotes by Peter Drucker:
Peter Drucker is a management icon, and his concepts, theories, and ideas have powered management thought for several decades. Drucker authored several books, and many of them are timeless classics.
The Austrian-born Drucker came to the United States via Germany and the United Kingdom and spent several decades as a professor of management at Claremont University.
Drucker was a giant in the field of management science.
Here are some of the top quotes by Peter Drucker.
Top Quotes by Peter Drucker: 25 Drucker quotations that will inspire and motivate.
- “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
- “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
- “The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.”
- “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
- “The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills. Everything else will become obsolete over time.”
- “Strategy is a commodity; execution is an art.”
- “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
- “Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.”
- “Defending yesterday is far riskier than making tomorrow.”
- “The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.”
- “Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.”
- “The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but the manager.”
- “Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”
- “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
- “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
- “Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings, the”
- “Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.”
- “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
- “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.”
- “Ideas are like frog eggs: you’ve got to lay a thousand to hatch one.”
- “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”
- “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
- “Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we’re right.”
- Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.
Which of the Peter Drucker quotations do you like? Did we miss anything that belongs in the top 25 quotes? Please share your thoughts.
Books by Peter Drucker:
