Quotes by Management Consultants

There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination compromise and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants by compromise neither side gets what it wants by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.
Mary Parker Follett
The insight to see possible new paths the courage to try them the judgment to measure results-these are the qualities of a leader.
Mary Parker Follett
Whenever you see a successful business someone once made a courageous decision.
Peter Drucker
There is no such thing as vicarious experience.
Mary Parker Follett
That is always our problem not how to get control of people but how all together we can get control of a situation.
Mary Parker Follett
Imitation is for shirkers like-minded-ness for the comfort lovers unifying for the creators.
Mary Parker Follett
The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.
Mary Parker Follett
The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.
Mary Parker Follett
The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workman but he can give them opportunities for developing their power.
Mary Parker Follett
I am convinced that any feeling of exaltation because we have people under us should be conquered for I am sure that if we enjoy being over people there will be something in our manner which will make them dislike being under us.
Mary Parker Follett
Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader-the common purpose.
Mary Parker Follett
Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision.
Harry A. Hopf
Unity not uniformity must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated not annihilated not absorbed.
Mary Parker Follett
It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.
Mary Parker Follett
Wherever you see a successful business someone once made a courageous decision.
Peter Drucker
Whenever you see a successful business someone once made a courageous decision.
Peter Drucker
The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.
Peter F Drucker
Most people are not for or against anything the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow to overcome inertia.
Mary Parker Follett
The things we fear most in organizations-fluctuations disturbances imbalances-are the primary sources of creativity.
Margaret J. Wheatley
Along this tree From root to crown Ideas flow up And vetoes down.
Peter Drucker
Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.
Peter Drucker
There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.
Peter F Drucker
Things have to be made to happen in a way you want them to happen. Without management without the intervention of organized willpower the desired result simply cannot be obtained.
Robert Heller
Experience may be hard but we claim its gifts because they are real even though our feet bleed on its stones.
Mary Parker Follett
Coercive power is the curse of the universe coactive power the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.
Mary Parker Follett
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter F Drucker
Imagine an organization where the physical plant honors the mission, celebrates the employees, shares information, holds people accountable, shapes the outside world's view and helps drive performance. That would be an organization which uses visual management.
Stewart Liff
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
Peter F Drucker
To be sure, 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.
Peter F Drucker
What's measured improves
Peter F Drucker
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter F Drucker
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.
Peter F Drucker
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.
Peter F Drucker
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
Peter F Drucker
One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Peter Drucker
Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce results.
Peter F Drucker
And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
Peter F Drucker
Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.
Peter F Drucker
The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.
Peter F Drucker
This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Peter F Drucker
Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society - and especially in the economy - as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is "creative destruction.
Peter F Drucker
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
Peter F Drucker
On an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker.
Robert K. Greenleaf
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
Peter F Drucker
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
Peter F Drucker
Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.
Robert K. Greenleaf
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
Peter Drucker
All you need is the will and the skill
Stewart Liff
The only way to predict the future is to create it
Peter Drucker
The only antidote to the unnerving effects of such incoherence is integrity. People and organizations with integrity are wholly themselves. No aspect of self stands different or apart. At their center is clarity, not conflict. When they go inside to find themselves, there is only one self there.
Margaret Wheatley
One must not be afraid of a little silence. Some find silence awkward or oppressive. But a relaxed approach to dialogue will include the welcoming of some silence. It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it - 'In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?
Robert K. Greenleaf
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Peter F Drucker
Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
Peter F Drucker
Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.
Peter F Drucker
People often overestimate what they can accomplish in one year. But they greatly underestimate what they could accomplish in five years.
Peter Drucker
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
Peter F Drucker
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Peter F Drucker
The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
Peter F Drucker
The best way to predict your future is to create it
Peter F Drucker
Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.
Robert K. Greenleaf