Peter Drucker Responsibility Quotations

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

Innovative efforts should never report to line managers charged with responsibility for ongoing operations. The new project is an infant and will remain one for the foreseeable future, and infants belong in the nursery. The 'adults', that is, the executives in charge of existing businesses or products will have neither the time nor understanding for the infant.

No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility.

It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, The enterprise must demand it of him.

But innovation is more than a new method. It is a new view of the universe, as one of risk rather than of chance or of certainty. It is a new view of man's role in the universe; he creates order by taking risks. And this means that innovation, rather than being an assertion of human power, is an acceptance of human responsibility.

The only industries that function well are the industries that take responsibility for training. The Japanese, you know, assume that when you first come to work you know absolutely nothing. School isn't preparation for work and never was.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

A fundamental responsibility of leadership is make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it, lives it.

Few relationships are as critical to the business enterprise itself as the relationship to government. The manager has responsibility for this relationship as part of his responsibility to the enterprise itself. To a large extent the relationship to government results from what businesses do or fail to do.

The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization - where you have responsibility, you see results, and you quickly learn what your values are. There is no better way to understand your strengths and discover where you belong than to volunteer in a nonprofit. That is probably the great opportunity for the social sector - and especially in its relationship to business.

Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions-as in moral truth and accountability they are.

Leadership is not rank, privileges, title or money. It is responsibility.

The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.

The leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege.