Categories

The measurable results are things that happened, they are in the past. There are no facts about the future.

That we can quantify something is no reason for measuring it.

…in knowledge-based work especially, additional capital investment is likely to require more rather than less labor.

By now it is clear that no one can provide the information that knowledge workers need, except knowledge workers themselves. But few managers so far have made much of an effort to decide what they need, and even less, how to organize it.

Managers have to learn two things: eliminate data that does not pertain to the information they need and organize the data to analyze and interpret it.

…managers must focus on the resulting information and take action. For the purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

For the manager there is, in the end, only one way to get [information]: that is to go, personally, on the outside.

…it is a very old observation that few things improve the performance of a physician as much as being a hospital patient for two weeks.

In the long run, information about the outside may be the most important information managers need to do their work. At the same time, it is the one that still has to be organized.

Managers must rely heavily on the information they need for their work, the information they owe to others, and on the methods they use to turn the chaos of data in the universe into organized and focused information for action.