As with last year and earlier, I’ve collected and curated Peter Drucker quotes to draw on for inspiration, applicable at the beginning and throughout the year. Each is listed with the books in which they appear. Ideally, the quotes can help you meet challenges and power through new projects, inside and outside the workplace:
“Achievement is addictive.” – Management: Revised Edition, 2008
“I have always been attracted to the unexpected success; in my experience, it holds the key to understanding.” – The Frontiers of Management, 1986
“If we want the new to have a chance, we must be willing to prune the old that no longer promises results.” – Managing for Results, 1964
“If you have more than five goals, you have none.” – Peter Drucker’s Five Most Important Questions, 2015
“Just as no one learns as much about a subject as the person who is forced to teach it, no one develops as much as the person who is trying to help others to develop themselves.” – Management, Revised Edition, 2008
“Little ideas have frequently been the seeds from which giant corporations have grown.” – Managing for Results, 1964
“Look carefully at your daily work, your daily tasks, and ask: “Would I go into this today knowing what I know today? Am I producing results or just relaxing in a comfortable routine, spending effort on something that no longer produces results?” – Managing the Non-Profit Organization, 1990
“Planning tries to optimize tomorrow the trends of today. Strategy aims to exploit the new and different opportunities of tomorrow.” – Managing in Turbulent Times, 1980
“Predicting the future can only get you into trouble. The task is to manage what is there and to work to create what could and should be.” – Managing in Turbulent Times, 1980
“Self-development becomes self-renewal when you walk a different path, become aware of a different horizon, move toward a different destination.” – Managing the Non-Profit Organization, 1990
“The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it.” – A Functioning Society, 2003
“The people who keep themselves alive and growing also build a review of their performance into their work.” – Drucker on Asia, 1995
“The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.” – Management: Revised Edition, 2008
“The society of organizations forces the individual to ask of himself: “Who am I?” “What do I want to be?” “What do I want to put into life and what do I want to get out of it?” – The Age of Discontinuity, 1969
“The task of an executive is not to change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of the Talents, the task is to multiply performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.” – The Effective Executive, 1967
“The time dimension is inherent in management because management is concerned with decisions for action. And action is always aimed at results in the future.” – The Practice of Management, 1954
“There is one requirement for managing the second half of one’s life: to being creating it long before one enters it.” – Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999
“To get at the new and better, you have to throw out the old, outworn, obsolete, no longer productive, as well as the mistakes, failure and misdirections of effort of the past.” – Managing For the Future, 1993
“We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.” – Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999
“We perceive, as a rule, what we expect to perceive. We see largely what we expect to see, and we hear largely what we expect to hear.” – Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, 1974
If you’ve found one or more of these quotes to be particularly helpful, please let me know; and remember to check out the quotes from Drucker that I post daily on Twitter!