American
Educator,
Author and
Business Consultant
(November 19,
1909 -
November 11,
2005)
"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
"Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money."
"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."
"Ethics stays in the prefaces of the average business science book."
"Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm."
"Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't."
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
"Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank."
"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said."
"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."
"People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year."
"Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work."
"The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager."
"Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility."
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work."
"We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it."
