"Repeatable tasks can be studied and improved. We can determine the most efficient , reliable, safest, and ,most productive way we know to do this work. Then we can document that method , teach it to everyone involved in the task and reinforce its continual use in a variety of worker-friendly ways."

"Standardizing a task around a single best method results in a better product and service for customers, greater ease in training new workers, and improving ability to solve problems and improve the process even more. While the best known method is being used as part of the routine, employees can continue to study the task to come up with an even better method. The effort thus keeps going."

Peter Scholtes
Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done: Leadership for the New Century (Unpublished)

"Reengineering is the radical redesign of business processes for dramatic improvement. Originally, I felt that the most important word in the definition was 'radical' .... I now come to realize that I was wrong, that the radical character of reengineering , however important and exciting, is not its most significant aspect. The key word in the definition of reengineering is 'process': a complete end-to-end set of activities that together create value for a customer."

"Some companies approach process centering by taking the high road of reengineering while others take the winding path of total quality management. Both the inhibitors and the determinants of business success in the global economy are process issues, and only process-centered companies will be in a position to deal with them. Any organization that hopes to thrive in the twenty-first century must reach the destination of process centering."

"The truth is that even superior people cannot compensate for the deficiencies of inferior processes."

"A company that bases its success on personal performance, even a small company, is digging its own grave."

Michael Hammer
Beyond Reengineering: How the Process Centered Organization is Changing Our Work and Our Lives

"Fixing the system is more important than fixing the blame."
- Dr. Phillip C. Schlechty
Inventing Better Schools

"The surest foundation of a business concern is quality. And after that, a long way after, comes cost."
- Andrew Carnegie

"As you can imagine, every organization is comprised of hundreds - even thousands - of interlocking processes…. To the extent that every employee is empowered to improve his or her process, the entire business can be optimized, bit by bit."
- Diane Galloway

"Many people can identify about three to eight different processes that they're a part of. Some managers will find that they work with a dozen of more processes."
- Diane Galloway

"All improvement requires change, but all changes do not result in improvement. To be considered an improvement, the change must lead to higher value to someone - better quality, a lower price, or both."
- Gerald Langley, et al

"It is equally valid for someone to behave their way into a new way of thinking as it is to think their way into a new way of behaving."
- Roberta Hestenes

"Without learning, there is no survival. Survival is not compulsory."
- W. Edwards Deming

"The first thing to ask when presented with data is, what was the question."
- William Scherkenbach

"The only reason to gather data is to take action."
- William Scherkenbach

"There are three ways to get better figures.

1. Improve the system
2. Distort the system
3. Distort the figures

"There are no such things as production, marketing, financial, etc., problems. These adjectives reveal nothing about the nature of a problem, only about the point of view of those looking at it."
- Russell Ackoff

"We made too many wrong mistakes."
- Yogi Berra

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
- attributed to Anais Nin

"The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
- Huston Smith

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."
- Wayne Gretzky

"Trust is an important lubricant of a social system. It is extremely efficient; it saves a lot of trouble to have a fair degree of reliance on other people's word."
- Kenneth Arrow

"It is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream. The failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize."
- Dee Hock

"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today."
- African Proverb

"The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes."
- Marcel Proust

"The formulation of a problem is the most essential part of problem solving."
- Albert Einstein

"Data, plural of datum derives from the Latin word daius which means what is given, hence gift, present."
Webster's New World Dictionary

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
- George Bernard Shaw

"Intelligence is what you use when you do not know what to do."
- Myron Tribus