A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality. |
Because its purpose is to create a customer, your business has two purposes and two purposes only: Marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation make you money, generate sales, produce profit. Everything else is an expense... |
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information. |
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. |
First and last, Drucker is a moralist of our business civilization. |
His great strength was not his charisma, as many commonly thought, but that he knew exactly what he could do and what he could not do. |
How can we overcome the resistance to innovation that plagues most organizations? |
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level. |
Management by objectives works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't. |
Management is doing a thing 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. |
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake. |
People who don't take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year. |
Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. |
Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses. |