The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive.
In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.
I have been saying for many years that we are using the word ‘guru’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline.
One has to make a decision when a condition is likely to degenerate if nothing is done.
Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant-and perhaps even the only-source of competitive advantage.
Now that knowledge is taking the place of capital as the driving force in organizations worldwide, it is all too easy to confuse data with knowledge and information technology with information.
The leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege.
To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.
I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than “making deals.” Management affects people and their lives.
A manager’s task is to make the strengths of people effective and their weakness irrelevant – and that applies fully as much to the manager’s boss as it applies to the manager’s subordinates.
The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.
The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.
The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.
To make a living is no longer enough. Work also has to make a life.
Management is not being brilliant. Management is being conscientious.
Knowledge is being applied to knowledge itself. It is now fast becoming the one factor in production, sidelining both capital and labour.
No business can do everything. Even if it has the money, it will never have enough good people. It has to set priorities. The worst thing to do is a little bit of everything. This makes sure that nothing is being accomplished. It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.
Strategic management is not a box of tricks or a bundle of techniques. It is analytical thinking and commitment of resources to action. But quantification alone is not planning. Some of the most important issues in strategic management cannot be quantified at all.
A business is not defined by its name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the business mission. Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic business objectives.
The manager who comes up with the right solution to the wrong problem is more dangerous than the manager who comes up with the wrong solution to the right problem.