Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.
All great change in business has come from outside the firm, not from inside.
Almost everybody today believes that nothing in economic history has ever moved as fast as, or had a greater impact than, the Information Revolution. But the Industrial Revolution moved at least as fast in the same time span, and had probably an equal impact if not a greater one.
There are no creeds in mathematics.
Everything must degenerate into work if anything is to happen.
To survive and succeed, every organization will have to turn itself into a change agent.
A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.
The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
We can say with certainty – or 90% probability – that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
For new technology to replace old, it has to have at least ten times the benefit.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.
I no longer think that learning how to manage people, especially subordinates, is the most important for executives to learn. I am teaching above all else, how to manage oneself.
The task of management is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.
Progress is obtained only by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. When you solve problems, all you do is guarantee a return to normalcy.
Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.