Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909-2005) was a journalist, management consultant, educator and author. he wrote 39 books and countless articles on a wide variety of subjects. Born in Austria, he worked in Germany, then the UK, before emigrating to the United States.
Three things impress us most about Peter Drucker:
– He saw dangers in Adolf Hitler and the emerging Nazi party years before others did. In 1932, Peter Drucker published an essay on German conservative philosopher, Friedrich Julius Stahl. This offended the emerging Nazi government which banned and burned it. Based on all accounts, only one copy still exists. Peter Drucker fled to London and later moved to the United States of America. Peter Drucker and Albert Einstein would have never left Europe if not for Hitler.
– Like Russell Ackoff (likely because of Russell Ackoff), Drucker understood the delicate balance and potential opportunity costs of technology when applied to organizations.
– With his investigative journalism background, Peter F. Drucker was able to uncover new insights about business in a way that few others could. It was all based on his empirical observations.
Peter Drucker on Financial Engineering:
Peter Drucker video ultra short intro to his life:
Peter Drucker video (more detailed):
A wonderful Rick Warren tribute to Peter Drucker:
Jim Collins Tribute to Peter Drucker:
Peter Drucker Quotes:
The three most charismatic leaders in this (20th) century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. – Peter Drucker Quotes
The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. – Peter Drucker Quotes
If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. – Peter Drucker Quotes
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. – Peter Drucker Quotes
What’s measured improves. – Peter Drucker Quotes
There is a point at which a transformation has to take place. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. – Peter Drucker Quotes
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. – Peter Drucker Quotes
This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. – Peter Drucker Quotes
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete – the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are. – Peter Drucker Quotes
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question. – Peter Drucker Quotes
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. – Peter Drucker Quotes
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. – Peter Drucker Quotes
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art. – Peter Drucker Quotes
The computer is a moron. – Peter Drucker Quotes
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday. – Peter Drucker Quotes
The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else. – Peter Drucker Quotes
To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing. – Peter Drucker Quotes
Effectiveness must be learned. – Peter Drucker Quotes
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. – Peter Drucker Quotes
I think the growth industry of the future in this country and the world will soon be the continuing education of adults. …I think the educated person of the future is somebody who realizes the need to continue to learn. That is the new definition and it is going to change the world we live in and work in.
– Peter Drucker Quotes
Peter Drucker Books:
1939 The End of Economic Man : A Study of the New Totalitarianism
1942 The Future of Industrial Man : A Conservative Approach
1946 Concept of the Corporation
1950 The New Society : The Anatomy of Industrial Society
1954 The Practice of Management
1957 America’s Next Twenty Years
1959 The Landmarks of Tomorrow : A Report on the New “post-modern” World
1964 Managing for Results : Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions
1966 The Effective Executive
1969 The Age of Discontinuity : Guidelines to Our Changing Society
1970 Technology, Management and Society
1971 The New Markets and Other Essays
1971 Men, Ideas and Politics
1971 Drucker on Management
1973 Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
1976 The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America
1977 People and Performance: The Best of Peter Drucker on Management
1978 Adventures of a Bystander
1980 Managing in Turbulent Times
1981 Toward the Next Economics and Other Essays
1982 The Changing World of Executive
1982 The Last of All Possible Worlds
1984 The Temptation to Do Good
1985 Innovation and Entrepreneurship
1986 The Frontiers of Management: Where Tomorrow’s Decisions are Being Shaped Today
1989 The New Realities: in Government and Politics, in Economics and Business, in Society and World View
1990 Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Practices and Principles
1992 Managing for the Future
1993 The Ecological Vision : Reflections on the American Condition
1993 Post-Capitalist Society
1995 Managing in a Time of Great Change
1997 Drucker on Asia: A Dialogue between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi
1999 Management Challenges for 21st Century
1999 Managing Oneself
2001 The Essential Drucker : The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management
2002 Managing in the Next Society
2002 A Functioning Society
2004 The Daily Drucker