The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.
Peter DruckerRead
The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A strong leader prioritizes enhancing the performance of key individuals over trying to improve the entire group.
This quote emphasizes the importance of effective leadership by noting that it is more impactful to empower and elevate the performance of a single strong leader than to attempt to improve a larger group. It highlights the need for leaders to focus on individual strengths, using them to set standards and drive performance, while disregarding weaknesses unless they obstruct the use of those strengths. This philosophy advocates for recognizing and utilizing talent effectively in leadership roles.
Themes
LeadershipPerformanceStrengthsFocusEmpowerment
In practice
Example use cases
In a corporate training session, a manager might use this quote to emphasize the importance of identifying and nurturing individual talents.
More from Peter Drucker
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We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
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The basic economic resource - the means of production -_x000D_ _x000D_ is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor._x000D_ _x000D_ It is and will be knowledge.
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Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.
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The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.
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