The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank.

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed before it. Executives of necessity live and work within an organization. Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside, the inside may blind them to the true reality.

The larger the animal becomes, the more resources have to be devoted to the mass and to the internal tasks, to circulation and information, to the nervous system, and so on.

The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data. The knowledge worker, therefore, must do something which a manual worker need not do. He must provide effectiveness.

In either case the decision-maker is outside rather than inside the business.

They know that they have no choice but to do first things first—and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done.

A work force may, indeed, be too small for the task. And the work then suffers, if it gets done at all. But this is not the rule. Much more common is the work force that is too big for effectiveness, the work force that spends, therefore, an increasing amount of its time “interacting” rather than working.

They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.

In a business, there can be attempts to mold the customers’ preferences and values through promotion and advertising.