Entry in progress—B.P.
     
Wikipedia: Peter Drucker
Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” His books and scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government and the nonprofit sectors of society. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” and later in his life considered knowledge work productivity to be the next frontier of management.
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Quotes
. “You can only manage what you can measure.”
 
Wikipedia: W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during the Cold War, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets) through various methods, including the application of statistical methods.
 
Deming made a significant contribution to Japan’s later reputation for innovative high-quality products and its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Despite being considered something of a hero in Japan, he was only just beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death.
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Quotations and concepts
. “The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable (Lloyd S. Nelson, director of statistical methods for the Nashua corporation), but successful management must nevertheless take account of them.”  Deming realized that many important things that must be managed couldn’t be measured. Both points are important. One, not everything of importance to management can be measured. And two, you must still manage those important things. Spend $20,000 training 10 people in a special skill. What’s the benefit? “You’ll never know,” answered Deming. “You’ll never be able to measure it. Why did you do it? Because you believed it would pay off. Theory.” Dr. Deming is often incorrectly quoted as saying, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” In fact, he stated that one of the seven deadly diseases of management is running a company on visible figures alone.
   
Google Books
Managing Behavior on the Job
By Paul L. Brown
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
1982
Pg. 37:
The axiom, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” has relevance.
   
Google News Archive
22 August 1982, Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, “Bank, center to hold session on productivity,” pg. 21, col. 1:
Jim Riggs, head of the industrial engineering department at OSU, also is director of the Productivity Center, which he helped found two years ago. The center is now used by about 200 companies in the Pacific Northwest, Riggs said,
 
“When you get right down to it, better productivity is merely a way to better combine the talents of people,” Riggs said. “We can help businesses develop a measurement system of their productive effort. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
   
Google Books
Design Assurance for Engineers and Managers
By John A. Burgess
CRC Press
1984
Pg. 258:
The management axiom: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” especially applies to reliability.
 
Google News Archive
23 September 1984, Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT), “The Game of Work” by Chuck Coonradt, pg. 2M, col. 2:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” I said to the supervisor of the people who did the filing.
(Pg. 8M, col. 5—ed.)
But it cannot be managed unless it is measured. You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
 
Google News Archive
25 November 1984, Spartanburg (SC) Herald-Journal, “The One-Minute Manager” by Ken Blanchard, pg. 14E, col. 4:
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
     
CNNMoney.com
TOMORROW’S CEOS MEET SIX HOT YOUNG MANAGERS WHO HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO LEAD IN THE 21ST CENTURY. ONE OF THEIR SECRETS: INSPIRING PEOPLE TO GREATER HEIGHTS.
By JUSTIN MARTIN REPORTER ASSOCIATE AMY KOVER
June 24, 1996
(FORTUNE Magazine) –
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But it wasn’t prairie populism alone that made one so young so successful. Brenneman balances his people skills with the punch of rigorous analysis. A favorite saying: what gets measured gets managed.
 
Google Books
Managed Care Pharmacy:
Principles and practice
By Albert I. Wertheimer and Robert Navarro
Binghamton, NY: Pharmaceutical Products Press
1999
Pg. 34:
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
Peter Drucker
   
Google Books
Automotive service management series. Operational Excellence
By Mitch Schneider
Clifton Park, NY: Thomson/Delmar Learning
2003
Pg. 9:
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it! — Peter Drucker
 
Results Junkies
Revisiting Drucker: What Gets Measured Gets Managed
Written by Paul on October 26th, 2008
Seems that everyone’s interested in analytics these days — well, maybe not interested, but there sure are a lot of people talking about analytics on the web these days. Regardless, it’s great to see that people are starting to see the value of clear dashboards and actionable metrics. Though, I do wonder how they made decisions without all the fancy new dashboards that are available out these days.
 
Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured, gets managed.”
   
Google Books
The Best Ideas are Free
By Ben Young
CreateSpace
2009
Pg. 133:
What Gets Measured Gets Managed
It’s the old adage Peter Drucker came up with: “What gets measured gets managed.”
 
Google Books
The failure of risk management:
Why it’s broken and how to fix it
By Douglas W. Hubbard
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
2009
Pg. 38:
There is an old management adage that says, ‘‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure.’’ (This is often misattributed to WE Deming, but is a truism, nonetheless.)
   
Google Books
Challenges in Implementing Corporate Governance:
Whose Business is it Anyway
By John Zinkin
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
2010
Pg. 169:
WHAT WE MEASURE AND REWARD
The late Peter Drucker observed that what is measured gets managed. This chapter will make the case that we often measure and reward the wrong things.
   
Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette
Allegheny County’s carbon footprint: 77,000 tons per year
Onorato last year pledged to cut that by 20% by 2015
Monday, June 14, 2010
By Len Barcousky, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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“Now we have our baseline, and now we know how much we have to cut to reach our goal,” said Jeaneen Zappa, the county’s sustainability manager. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” she said, echoing an often-repeated business maxim.