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Who really said it

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it

Not Peter Drucker — an unsourced management maxim Unknown Unattributed · no documented author or first use
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Nothing resembling this sentence has been found in Peter Drucker’s published work; a Berkeley Haas faculty note ↗, citing the Drucker Institute’s own post, reports that Drucker did not originate the phrase. The words do appear in W. Edwards Deming’s The New Economics — but inside a sentence calling them “a costly myth” ↗.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If you can't measure it, you can't manage it” Unsourced management maxim — not Peter Drucker. W. Edwards Deming put the words in print in The New Economics only to call them “a costly myth” (3rd ed., MIT Press, 2018, p. 26). Via Quotle.info Verbatim: “It is wrong to suppose that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it – a costly myth.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Peter Drucker. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of leadership, knowledge and work. Theme: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail

Popular wording
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”
Credited to
Peter Drucker (1909–2005) — no documented source
Documented in print
The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education
Written by
W. Edwards Deming, who set the words down in order to reject them; the Deming Institute cites the third edition (MIT Press, 2018), p. 26

It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth. Refuted, not asserted

The appearance the Deming Institute documents is a refutation, not an endorsement. Strip the first six words and Deming appears to be saying the opposite of what he wrote.

Scanned book
The New Economics at the Internet Archive (MIT CAES printing, 1994)
The Deming Institute's citation for the passage

How we know

The popular one-liner has no identifiable author and no traceable first publication, so no copyright status can honestly be asserted for it. The sentence quoted above is a different matter: it is Deming’s, from The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education — first published in 1993 and still in print from MIT Press — so it remains in copyright and appears here as a short quotation for comment.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

A maxim in search of an author

This is a slogan with no parent, and the two biggest names in management have both been drafted for the job — one of them while arguing the opposite.

Peter Drucker no source

Drucker is the default author for any brisk-sounding management line, but no page reference has ever surfaced. A Berkeley Haas faculty note ↗ reports that Drucker did not originate this phrase, citing the Drucker Institute’s own post — which is itself about the sibling slogan “what gets measured gets managed.” His own position pointed the other way: in The Effective Executive he argued that knowledge work cannot be measured the way manual work can ↗.

W. Edwards Deming quoted backwards

Deming really did write these words — inside a sentence rejecting them. The Deming Institute files the line under “Myth” ↗ and notes that he treated attention to visible figures alone as one of management’s “deadly diseases,” and that plenty of unmeasurable things still have to be managed.

“What gets measured gets managed” also unsourced

The same machinery runs on Drucker’s other measurement slogan. A 2012 hunt for its origin concluded the writer had never seen an actual reference that proves he said it ↗, and a later investigation reports the Drucker Institute saying the same while quoting Simon Caulkin’s summary of V. F. Ridgway’s 1956 paper on the dysfunctional consequences of performance measurement ↗.

Lord Kelvin different claim

The oldest respectable relative is Kelvin’s 1883 remark that knowledge you cannot put in numbers is “of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind” ↗ — a claim about the state of scientific knowledge, not a licence to stop managing whatever resists a number.

Nobody has found an author. What the record does show is that the most-cited candidate put these exact words into print in order to call them “a costly myth” ↗.

Context

Why the wrong version won

The line survives because it is convenient. It converts a hard question — is this worth doing? — into an easy one: can we put a number on it? And it arrives pre-loaded with authority, because somebody in the room always says Drucker said it.

What makes this more than a footnote is the direction of travel. Both of the men usually credited are on record resisting the idea: Drucker on the unmeasurability of knowledge work, Deming on the danger of managing only what shows up in the figures. The maxim that carries their names is the position they were arguing against.

Deming did write these words. He wrote them so he could call them a costly myth.

The dead link, the sibling slogan, and the 1956 paper underneath both

The Drucker Institute’s own treatment of the question — a July 2013 piece titled “Measurement Myopia” by Paul Zak — is no longer online at its former address. A 2020 post that catalogued the debunkings ↗ preserves its title, author and date.

Henry Mintzberg, who has no patience for the maxim either, opens his rebuttal by calling it “sheer nonsense” ↗ — and, tellingly, attributes it to nobody at all. The scholarly thread behind the sibling slogan runs instead to V. F. Ridgway’s 1956 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly, which granted that quantitative measures are useful but warned they are routinely over-trusted ↗.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Leadership Knowledge Work

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Myth: If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage Itdeming.org

The W. Edwards Deming Institute on why the short form misattributes Deming and inverts his meaning.
Deming's sentence, with its citationdeming.org

The Institute's quotations database: the full wording, cited to the third edition (MIT Press, 2018), p. 26.
So you CAN manage what you can't measure?faculty.haas.berkeley.edu

A Berkeley Haas faculty note reporting that neither Drucker (per the Drucker Institute) nor Deming coined the phrase.
If You Can't Measure It, You'd Better Manage Itmintzberg.org

Henry Mintzberg's rebuttal, which calls the maxim 'sheer nonsense' and credits it to no one.
'What gets measured gets managed' - Drucker never said itdannybuerkli.com

On the sibling slogan: reports the Drucker Institute's denial and quotes Simon Caulkin's summary of Ridgway's 1956 paper.
Peter Druckeren.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced Drucker corpus; its Misattributed section covers only 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast' and lists no measurement line.

The real paper trail

The man who printed the words — to reject them

W. Edwards Deming

1900–1993 · American statistician and quality-management theorist

Deming was the statistician whose teaching on variation and process control reshaped postwar Japanese manufacturing and, belatedly, American management. He is the person most often named as the source of “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” — which is an irony, because the sentence is his only in the sense that he wrote it down to knock it over. His actual argument was that a good deal of what matters most in an organisation never appears in the figures, and that managing by the visible numbers alone is a disease rather than a discipline.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

No source located in Peter Drucker’s published work. The wording is documented in print in W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), 26 — where Deming calls it “a costly myth”; the book was first published in 1993.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you can't measure it, you can't manage it’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-cant-measure-it-you-cant-manage-it/

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