35 tweets of Peter Drucker on Management, Purpose and Innovation

[From the book: Peter F. Drucker, The Essential Drucker, Collins Business Essentials, 2009]

1. The fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change (4)
2. The emergence of management has converted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the true capital of any economy (5)
3. Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures (8)
4. The evolution and history of management— its successes as well as its problems— teach that management is, above all else, based on a very few, essential principles (10)
5. Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant (10)
6. After World War II we began to see that management is not exclusively business management. It pertains to every human effort that brings together in one organization people of diverse knowledge and skills (7)
7. Because management deals with the integration of people in a common venture, it is deeply embedded in culture (11)
8. One of the basic challenges managers in a developing country face is to find and identify those parts of their own tradition, history, and culture that can be used as management building blocks (11)
9. Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob (11)
10. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision (…) Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals (11)
11. 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 (11)
12. The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results exist only on the outside. The result of a hospital is a healed patient. The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work ten years later. Inside an enterprise, there are only costs (12)
13. Management will increasingly be the discipline and the practice through which the “humanities” will again acquire recognition, impact, and relevance (13)
14. There are three tasks, equally important but essentially different, that management has to perform to enable the institution in its charge to function and to make its contribution: establishing the specific purpose and mission of the institution, whether business enterprise, hospital, or university; making work productive and the worker effective; managing social impacts and social responsibilities (14)
15. A business management has failed if it does not produce economic results. It has failed if it does not supply goods and services desired by the consumer at a price the consumer is willing to pay (15)
16. A business enterprise (or any other institution) has only one true resource: people (15)
17. None of our institutions exists by itself and is an end in itself. Everyone is an organ of society and exists for the sake of society (16)
18. Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business; it can be justified only as being good for society (16)
19. Psychologically, geographically, culturally, and socially, institutions must be part of the community (16)
20. Profitability is not the purpose of, but a limiting factor on business enterprise and business activity (18)
21. Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity (18)
22. A company can make a social contribution only if it is highly profitable (20)
23. Profit is not an objective but it is a requirement that has to be objectively determined in respect to the individual business, its strategy, its needs, and its risks (30)
24. Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two— and only these two— basic functions: marketing and innovation (20)
25. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself (21)
26. Marketing is still rhetoric rather than reality in far too many businesses (20)
27. Nontechnological innovations— social or economic innovations— are at least as important as technological ones (22)
28. Innovation can be defined as the task of endowing human and material resources with new and greater wealth- producing capacity (22)
29. Managers must convert society’s needs into opportunities for profitable business. That, too, is a definition of innovation (23)
30. The answer to the question, What is our business? is the first responsibility of top management. It can be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of customer and market (24)
31. Sooner or later even the most successful answer to the question, What is our business? becomes obsolete (26)
32. Defining the purpose and mission of the business is difficult, painful, and risky. But it alone enables a business to set objectives, to develop strategies, to concentrate its resources, and to go to work. It alone enables a business to be managed for performance (28)
33. Objectives are not fate; they are directions. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future (31)
34. There are essentially three kinds of innovation in every business (…) They might be called respectively product innovation, social innovation, and managerial innovation (34)
35. The social dimension is a survival dimension. The enterprise exists in a society and an economy (37)

Peter F. Drucker

The Essential Drucker

Collins Business Essentials

2009