Peter Drucker

The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable assets of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge, workers, and their productivity.

There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.

Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.

There are only two things in a business that make money - innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.

The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system's weaknesses irrelevant.

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.

Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.

We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don't spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop

Vision without execution is delusion. The joy is in the results

Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust.

One can either work or meet. One cannot do both at the same time.

The bеѕt wау tо predict уоur future іѕ tо create it.

If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person - hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre - into an outstanding performer.

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant-and perhaps even the only-source of competitive advantage.

I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than "making deals." Management affects people and their lives.

One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.

People are effective because they say 'no,' because they say, 'this isn't for me.'

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.