For my money, the best bang for the buck and wisdom per word on marketing, management and business comes from Peter Drucker. Born in Vienna in 1909, Peter wrote 39 books by the time he left us in 2005. He was frequently sought after by the Harvard Business Review, The Economist and the Atlantic Monthly.
For the 12 days of Christmas, here are a dozen pieces of sage advice from Peter.
- Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
- Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
- Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
- Objectives are not fate; they are direction. 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.
- Most discussions of decision-making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
- People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
- Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
- The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
- The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.
- There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
Peter’s wisdom is never out of season. For information about the Drucker Institute, go to http://www.druckerinstitute.com/
