Peter Drucker's mantras for success

Peter Drucker, the legendary management gurus's mantras as known.

Born on November 19, 1909, Drucker was the giant who defined management and
aided in the rise of the modern corporations. Over the last few decades, new gurus may
have replaced Drucker, but his books and his management principles continue to be
bedrock of the corporate world. (Image 0 – Peter Drucker)

Drucker, born in Vienna, moved to England for study, to escape Hitler. Four years later,
he moved to the United States, where he began his academic career.

Drucker, who has authored numerous books on the principles that should govern the
corporate world, helped develop the US's first executive MBA programme at the
Claremont Graduate University; the university's management school is known as the
Peter Drucker School of Management (it was named in his honour in 1987).

He died on November 11, 2005, disillusioned with the increasingly capitalistic trend
being displayed by the business world. His principles, how ever, stand rock-steady and
continue to inspire millions of employees, employers and entrepreneurs across the world.

 Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

 The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
 Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even
more effective action.
 No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It
must be organised in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership
composed of average human beings.
 The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.

 Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

 Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is
defined by results not attributes.
 All one has to do is to learn to say 'no' if an activity contributes nothing.
 What is the first duty -- and the continuing responsibility -- of the business manager?
To strive for the best possible economic results from the resources currently employed
or available.
 People do not know that you cannot successfully innovate in an existing organisation
unless you systematically abandon. As long as you eliminate, you'll eat again. But if you
stop eliminating, you don't last long.

 Leaders shouldn't attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can't
compromise.
 The only things that evolve by themselves in an organisation are disorder, friction,
and malperformance.
 One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. Time is
totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday's time is gone forever, and will never
come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Yet most
people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.
 The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.
 Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

 Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principles of effectiveness are

violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.
 Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of
present decisions.
 Leadership is not magnetic personality. It is not 'making friends and influencing
people'. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's
performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal
limitations.
 What gets measured, gets managed.
 No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become
someone's work assignment and responsibility.

 Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous

decision.
 Meetings are a symptom of bad organisation. The fewer meetings the better.
 The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an
opportunity.
 Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to
work with what you've got.
 Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are
commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilise the
resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

 Any organisation develops people: It has no choice. It either helps them grow or
stunts them.
 Don't take on things you don't believe in and that you yourself are not good at. Learn
to say no.
 If you can't establish clear career priorities by yourself, use friends and business
acquaintances as a sounding board. They will want to help. Ask them to help you
determine your 'first things' and 'second things.' Or seek an outside coach or advisor to
help you focus. Because if you don't know what your 'first things' are, you simply can't
do them FIRST.
 Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed
tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In
teaching we rely on the ?naturals', the ones who somehow know how to teach.
 Don't travel too much. Organise your travel. It is important that you see people and
that you are seen by people maybe once or twice a year. Otherwise, don't travel. Make
them come to see you.

 The leaders who work most effectively, never say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think
'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They
accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit... This is what creates
trust, what enables you to get the task done.
 Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done. They are
very popular because they always say yes. But they get nothing done.
 Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
 The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
 Again, let's start out discussing what not to do. Don't try to be somebody else. By
now you have your style. This is how you get things done.

 Leaders communicate in the sense that people around them know what they are
trying to do. They are purpose driven -- yes, mission driven. They know how to establish
a mission.

 I tell all my clients that it is absolutely imperative that they spend a few weeks each
year outside their own business and actively working in the marketplace, or in a
university lab in the case of technical people. The best way is for the chief executive
officer to take the place of a salesman twice a year for two weeks.
 Few top executives can even imagine the hatred, contempt and fury that has been
created -- not primarily among blue-collar workers who never had an exalted opinion of
the 'bosses' -- but among their middle management and professional people.
 When you are the chief executive, you're the prisoner of your organisation. The
moment you're in the office, everybody comes to you and wants something, and it is
useless to lock the door. They'll break in. So, you have to get outside the office. But still,
that isn't travelling. That's being at home or having a secret office elsewhere. When
you're alone, in your secret office, ask the question, 'What needs to be done?' Develop
your priorities and don't have more than two. I don't know anybody who can do three
things at the same time and do them well. Do one task at a time or two tasks at a time.
That's it. When you are finished with two jobs or reach the point where it's futile, make
the list again. Don't go back to priority three. At that point, it's obsolete.
 We suffer from over-choice: 67 varieties of toothpaste, 487 styles of shoes, 186 brands of cell phones
with 137 telephone companies. We demand more variety than we could possibly need or want; and as a
result, we get lost in options, opportunities, and choices. There are 87 varieties of lawyers, and 75
specialties inside medicine. The world of work can be a confusing landscape.

 That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe
indictment of our organisations -- not just business, but government service, the
universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting.
 A critical question for leaders is: 'When do you stop pouring resources into things
that have achieved their purpose?'
 Morale in an organisation does not mean that 'people get along together'; the test is
performance not conformance.
 An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific
contract calling for a specific performance... Any attempt to go beyond that is
usurpation. It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy. It is abuse of power.
An employee owes no 'loyalty,' he owes no 'love' and no 'attitudes' -- he owes
performance and nothing else.
 Ideas are somewhat like babies -- they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise
rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company, executives do not say, 'This is a damn-fool idea.'
Instead they ask, 'What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into
something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?'

 Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows

resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
 Once a year ask the boss, 'What do I or my people do that helps you to do your job?'
and 'What do I or my people do that hampers you?'
 Great leaders find out whether they picked the truly important things to do. I've seen
a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at
picking the important things. They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things
done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters.
 How does one display integrity? 'By asking, especially when taking on office: What is
the foremost need of the institution?and therefore my first task and duty?'
 Ask yourself: What major change in the economy, market or knowledge would
enable our company to conduct business the way we really would like to do it, the way
we would really obtain economic results?

 Ask yourself: What would happen if this were not done at all?
 So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to
work.
 The subordinate's job is not to reform or re-educate the boss, not to make him
conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be
like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual.
 Effective leaders check their performance. They write down, what do I hope to
achieve if I take on this assignment?' They put away their goals for six months and then
come back and check their performance against goals. This way, they find out what
they do well and what they do poorly.
 The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society.

 The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one
management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
 The computer is a moron.
 Successful leaders make sure that they succeed! They are not afraid of strength in
others.
 The CEO needs to ask of his associates, 'What are you focusing on?' Ask your
associates, 'You put this on top of your priority list -- why?' The reason may be the right
one, but it may also be that this associate of yours is a salesman who persuades you
that his priorities are correct when they are not.
 Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good
for society.
 Executives owe it to the organisation and to their fellow workers not to tolerate
nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
 A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
 Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
 Business, that's easily defined -- it's other people's money.
 Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have
realised their expectations... They now need more and more expensive clerks even
though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

 What's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for
laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially
unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.

 Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

 A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on
people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.
 Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
 Performing organisations enjoy what they're doing.