The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. Michael Porter
The time is always right to do what is right. Martin Luther King Jr
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. Stephen R. Covey
The term ‘power’ comes from the Latin posse: to do, to be able, to change, to influence or effect. To have power is to possess the capacity to control or direct change. All forms of leadership must make use of power. The central issue of power in leadership is not Will it be used? But rather Will it be used wisely and well? Al Gini
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. Mark Twain
Effectiveness is a habit. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on what is important. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives […] try to find the constants in a situation, to think through what is strategic and generic rather than to ‘solve problems’. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives […] want impact rather than technique. And they want to be sound rather than clever. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives do not start out with their tasks. They start out with their time. And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Peter F. Drucker
All one has to do is to learn to say “no” if an activity contributes nothing to one’s own organization, to oneself, or to the organization for whom it is to be performed. Peter F. Drucker
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday. Peter F. Drucker
Above all, effective executives treat change as an opportunity rather than a threat. They systematically look at changes, inside and outside the corporation, and ask, “How can we exploit this change as an opportunity for our enterprise?”. Peter F. Drucker
What we need is a way to identify the areas of effectiveness (of possible significant results), and a method for concentrating on them. Peter F. Drucker
What is the manager’s job? It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives put their best people on opportunities rather than on problems. Peter F. Drucker
Every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to problems rather than to opportunities, and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimal impact on results. Peter F. Drucker
An executive who makes many decisions is both lazy and ineffectual. Peter F. Drucker
Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed. Peter F. Drucker
I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time. Peter F. Drucker
Problem solving, however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results. Peter F. Drucker
The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness. Peter F. Drucker
The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped. But he must direct himself, and he must direct himself toward performance and contribution, that is, toward effectiveness. Peter F. Drucker
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time. Peter F. Drucker
There seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination or his knowledge. Peter F. Drucker
Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. Peter F. Drucker
Effective executives do not race. They set an easy pace but keep going steadily. Peter F. Drucker
The less an organization has to do to produce results, the better it does its job. Peter F. Drucker
To be effective every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours. Peter F. Drucker
Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events. And without check-ins to reexamine the plan as events unfold, the executive has no way of knowing which events really matter and which are only noise. Peter F. Drucker
The people who get nothing done often work a great deal harder. In the first place, they underestimate the time for any one task. They always expect that everything will go right. Yet, as every executive knows, nothing ever goes right. The unexpected always happens—the unexpected is indeed the only thing one can confidently expect. Peter F. Drucker
“Is this still worth doing?” And if it isn’t, he gets rid of it so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that, if done with excellence, will really make a difference in the results of his own job and in the performance of his organization. Peter F. Drucker
If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Peter F. Drucker
