Profit is not a cause, but a result.
If a business is to be considered a continuous process, instead of a series of disjointed stop-and-go events, then the economic universe in which a business operates-and all the major events within it-must have rhyme, rhythm, or reason.
A business exists because the consumer is willing to pay you his money. You run a business to satisfy the consumer. That isn’t marketing. That goes way beyond marketing.
Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.
Objectives are not commands; they are commitments.
The critical factor of a problem is the element that has to be changed before anything else can be changed.
Don’t solve problems. Pursue opportunities.
Most innovators are successful to the extent to which they define risks and confine them.
Most leaders don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.
It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.
Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will be taken over by a Central government.
The concept of profit maximization is, in fact, meaningless.
The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education – or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments – is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves...
Understanding our strengths, articulating our values, knowing where we belong – these are also essential to addressing one of the great challenges of organizations: improving the abysmally low productivity of knowledge workers.
History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.
Leaders grow; they are not made.
The most critical case in a corporation, especially a big one, is when everything goes well, when you have accomplished your objectives. When the temptation is to work twice as hard instead of saying, “We have accomplished our objectives, we have to think again.”
Our society has become an employee society.
It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, The enterprise must demand it of him.
Shoes are real. Money is an end result.