Foolproof systems don’t take into account the ingenuity of fools.”
Gene Brown
“A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.”
Stephen R. Covey
“Anything that can be measured can be improved”
Michael Dell
“A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. …A system must be managed. The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.”
W. Edwards Deming
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing”
W. Edwards Deming
A bad system will beat a good person every time
W. Edwards Deming
“You cannot manage what you cannot measure”
Peter Drucker
But no one can praise Roosevelt for doing this and then insist that he restored our traditional political and economic systems to their former vitality.
John T. Flynn
“Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship”
Benjamin Franklin
Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring.
Jesse James Garrett
“Organize around business functions, not people. Build systems within each business function. Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go but the systems remain constant”
Michael Gerber
“In order for any business to succeed, it must first become a system so that the business functions exactly the same way every time down to the last detail”
Rick Harshaw
“At its core, a fully functioning business is basically a set of systems and processes”
John Jantsch
“All wealth is based upon systems”
Dan Kennedy
“For a business to survive and thrive, 100 percent of all the systems must be functioning and accountable. For example: An airplane is a system of systems. If an airplane takes off and the fuel system fails, there often is a crash. The same things happen in business. It’s not the systems that you know about that are the problem – it’s the systems you are not aware of that cause you to crash”
Robert Kiyosaki
“Think of these business systems as bridges. Bridges that will provide a path for you to cross safely …to financial freedom. . . Let’s take a dentist. A dentist spends years in school learning to become a self-contained system. You, as the client, get a toothache. You go see your dentist. He fixes your tooth. You pay and go home. You’re happy and then tell all of your friends about your great dentist. In most cases, the dentist can do the entire job by himself. The problem is that if the dentist goes on vacation, so does his income. True business owners can go on vacation forever because they own a system, not a job. If the business owner is on vacation, the money still comes in”
Robert Kiyosaki
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
Dave Parnas
“I always look to the system for a solution. If a challenge arises I use a system correction before I look for a people correction. I use a system solution in my innovation rather than a people solution. I follow the system exactly until a new system is introduced. I suggest system improvements at my first opportunity”
Brad Sugars
“Small differences in your [system] performance can lead to large differences in your results”
Brian Tracy
Systems are not sexy – but they really DO drive everything we do!
Carrie Wilkerson
“Everything affects everything else in one way or another. Whether you are aware of that or not does not change the fact that this is what is happening. That’s why I say a business is a system. This systems perspective reminds us that this is what is going on. And when you see it this way, you can manage your business better. You appreciate, for example, that any action will reverberate throughout the entire company. This causes you to pay more attention to what you do, and learn the right lessons from your experience.”
John Woods
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