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Who really said it

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it

Written by Peter Drucker 1909–2005 · Austrian-American management writer and consultant
Verified In copyright

The line is from Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (Harper & Row, 1973) — Wikiquote’s sourced list ↗ places it in Part 1, at p. 88 — and the Drucker Institute publishes the full surrounding paragraph under Drucker’s name. Unusually for a widely-shared Drucker line, this one is real.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it” Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), Part 1, p. 88.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Peter F. Drucker and Harper & Row, the original publisher). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The book

Work
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
First published
Harper & Row, New York, 1973
Location
Part 1, p. 88 — per Wikiquote’s sourced list
Author
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005)

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities. Part 1

Drucker goes on to say that success also generates its own fresh problems, and that the hardest company in which to reopen the question ‘what is our business?’ is a successful one. The full paragraph is reproduced by the Drucker Institute ↗.

Wikiquote: Peter Drucker (sourced quotations)

How we know

In copyright

The sentence comes from Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, first published by Harper & Row in 1973 — decades after the 1931 US public-domain cutoff — so the book and this line remain in copyright. Quoting a sentence for identification and comment is ordinary fair use; the Internet Archive scan ↗ is lending-restricted for the same reason.

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

Drucker’s fake-quote problem

Peter Drucker is one of the most heavily counterfeited names in business writing — so heavily that the institute bearing his name keeps a running public list of lines he never wrote. This sentence is not on that list. But it travels in bad company, and it is worth knowing which of its neighbours are forgeries.

Peter Drucker Not Drucker

The Drucker Institute ↗ calls this his most enduring mis-quotation. What he actually argued, in a 1991 Wall Street Journal piece the Institute cites, was that culture is stubbornly persistent — not that it defeats every attempt to change it.

Peter Drucker Not Drucker

Also on the Institute’s list ↗, which points to a longer sentence in People and Performance about choosing what to measure — and notes that the snappy version strips out the role Drucker gave managers in making any tool work.

Peter Drucker Not Drucker

The Institute nicknames it “the Moby Dick of Drucker mis-quotations” and reports that Warren Bennis, once thought to be the co-source, could only say it sounded like something either of them might have said. See the entry ↗.

Peter Drucker Not Drucker

Another entry on the same list ↗; the Institute says the phrasing is probably best credited to the computer scientist Alan Kay.

This line is the exception. Wikiquote files it among Drucker’s sourced quotations ↗, at p. 88 of Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, and the Drucker Institute prints the full paragraph under his name. Credit it to Drucker — and cite the book, because almost nobody who reposts it does.

Context

Why the sentence bites

Most warnings about complacency say some version of ‘don’t rest on your laurels.’ Drucker’s claim is sharper and less comfortable: the winning behaviour is precisely the thing the win destroys. Succeed, and the market, the workforce and the customer base you now face are not the ones your playbook was written for — so the playbook is already out of date on the day it pays off.

In the paragraph the line opens, Drucker goes straight from that observation to his signature question — what is our business? — and argues that the company least able to ask it honestly is the successful one, because nobody wants to argue with a win. The Drucker Institute’s 2011 column on the passage ↗ traces the thinking to Joseph Schumpeter, a friend of the Drucker family and one of the biggest influences on his work, and to Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction.

The winning behaviour is not merely superseded by success. It is obsoleted by it.

What the Institute draws out of the passage

Writing for the Institute, Joseph Maciariello reads the sentence through the S-curve: products and organisations pass through growth, stagnation and decline, and the moment to rethink the business is near the top of the curve, while there is still surplus to absorb the hit of investing in something new.

His practical conclusion is the uncomfortable one — be willing to cannibalise your own successful products and services, because if you do not, a competitor will. Read the column ↗.

Explore

Filed under

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

Success Change Wisdom

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.

Wikiquote — Peter Druckeren.wikiquote.org

Carries the line in its sourced section, filed under Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (Harper & Row, 1973), Part 1, p. 88.
Drucker Institute — On Success and Creative Destructionweb.archive.org

Archived 2011 column by Joseph Maciariello that opens with the full paragraph, credited to Peter F. Drucker, and reads it through Schumpeter's creative destruction.
Drucker Institute — Did Peter Drucker Say That?web.archive.org

The Institute's own catalogue of Drucker mis-quotations, with the real sentences and sources beside them. This line is not on it.
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (scan)archive.org

Internet Archive lending scan of the Harper & Row printing of the book the sentence comes from.
Quote Investigator — Peter Drucker archivequoteinvestigator.com

QI's eight Drucker investigations, several of them debunkings. This sentence is not among them.
Wikipedia — Peter Druckeren.wikipedia.org

Life dates (19 Nov 1909 – 11 Nov 2005), his 1971–2005 chair at Claremont Graduate University, and the 1973 Harper & Row publication of the book.

About the author

Peter F. Drucker

Peter Drucker

1909–2005 · Austrian-American management writer, consultant and educator

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909–2005) was an Austrian-American writer, consultant and teacher who did more than anyone to make management a subject you could study rather than merely practise. From 1971 until his death he was Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University, which now houses the Drucker Institute and his personal archive. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973) was his broadest single statement of the discipline, and the book this sentence comes from.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), Part 1, p. 88. Page location per Wikiquote’s sourced list; the book remains in copyright and every scan we could reach is lending-restricted, so the page was not confirmed in hand.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/success-always-obsoletes-the-very-behavior-that-achieved-it/

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