Photo – Jeff McNeill CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As mentioned in my last post, I’ve been a lifelong follower of Peter Drucker’s seminal work on personal, team, and organization effectiveness. After writing that post, I went into my research database and found I’ve filed over 130 of his quotes, articles, and excerpts. Here are just a few favorites:

So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.

Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change.

Success always makes obsolete the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities, It always creates, above all, its own and different problems. Only the fairy tale ends, “they lived happily ever after.”

A leader has to be an energizer and motivator, someone who inspires and guides others, who energizes the system and generates the magic that makes everyone want to do something extra.

Effective executives do not start out by looking at weaknesses. You cannot build performanceon weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.

A manager develops people. Through the way he manages, he makes it easy or difficult for them to develop themselves. He directs people or misdirects them. He brings out what is in them, or he stifles them.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob.

Making the right people decisions is the ultimate means of controlling an organization.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we,” they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function.

Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels – training and development that never stop.
{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_sa_2_0": [" span_70\">\n<h6 class=\"post-type-date\">Blog Post</h6>\n<h1 class=\"post-title h1-blog\">Thoughts That Make you go Hmmm&#8230;from Peter Drucker<span class=\"icon\"></span></h1>\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Jeff McNeill CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons\" src=\"https://www.clemmergroup.com/newsl/images/drucker1.jpg\" alt=\"Peter Drucker\" width=\"1199\" height=\"630\" />\n<p style=\"text-align: right; font-size: 10px;\">Photo &#8211; Jeff McNeill <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons</p>\n<p>As mentioned in my <a href=\"https://www.clemmergroup.com/blog/2018/12/12/hinge-of-history-a-major-leadership-and-culture-transformation-is-underway/\">last post</a>, I&#8217;ve been a lifelong follower of Peter Drucker&#8217;s seminal work on personal, team, and organization effectiveness. After writing that post, I went into my research database and found I&#8217;ve filed over 130 of his quotes, articles, and excerpts. Here are just a few favorites:"]}