Quality Quotes

Happy Holidays!

ASQ Holiday Break December 25-January 1

Week of December 17

Friday, December 21: "Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say." Andy Stanley

Thursday, December 20: "Men in the game are blind to what men looking on see clearly." Chinese proverb

Wednesday, December 19: "Every wall is a door." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tuesday, December 18: "There is no shame in not knowing. The shame lies in not finding out." Russian proverb

Monday, December 17: "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses." Zig Ziglar

Week of December 10

Friday, December 14: "Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away." Elvis Presley

Thursday, December 13: "Let your net always be cast, and in the pool which you least expect, there will be a fish." Ovid

Wednesday, December 12: "It doesn’t work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps." American proverb

Tuesday, December 11: "Fear is the mind-killer." Frank Herbert

Monday, December 10: "Failure does not mean 'defeat'; it simply means 'delay'." Anonymous

Week of December 3

Friday, December 7: "To succeed in life you need two things: ignorance and confidence." Mark Twain

Thursday, December 6: "We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves." Galileo Galilei

Wednesday, December 5: "It is our imagination that transforms itself into reality." Helen Araromi

Tuesday, December 4: "Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for greater responsibilities." Napoleon Hill

Monday, December 3: "With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere." C.S. Lewis

Week of November 26

Friday, November 30: "The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thursday, November 29: "Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure." George Eliot

Wednesday, November 28: "Don't forget that some things count more than other things." William Saroyan

Tuesday, November 27: "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." Willa Cather

Monday, November 26: "Nobody can give you fearlessness. You have to practice it yourself." Thich Nhat Hahn

Week of November 19

Friday, November 23: ASQ closed for holiday

Thursday, November 22: Happy Thanksgiving! (US Holiday)

Wednesday, November 21: “All good work requires self-revelation.” Sidney Lumet

Tuesday, November 20: "To assess the quality of thoughts of people, don't listen to their words, but watch their actions.” Amit Kalantri

Monday, November 19: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Will Durant

Week of November 12

Friday, November 16: "Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it." Madeleine L'Engle

Thursday, November 15: “Always do things right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain

Wednesday, November 14: "We create our fate every day we live." Henry Miller

Tuesday, November 13: "Pressure makes diamonds.” General George S. Patton

Monday, November 12: “We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.” John Holt

Week of November 5

Friday, November 9: “A bad workman blames his tools.” Chinese Proverb

Thursday, November 8: "The secret joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it." Pearl S. Buck

Wednesday, November 7: “Surround yourself with a trusted and loyal team. It makes all the difference.” Alison Pincus, One Kings Lane

Tuesday, November 6: "If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away." Linus Pauling

Monday, November 5: "Success is not money or style, but the progressive realization of your own goals." Jim Rohn

Week of October 29

Friday, November 2: "Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway." John Wayne

Thursday, November 1: "Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action." Joseph M. Juran

Wednesday, October 31: "Awareness is the greatest agent for change." Eckhart Tolle

Tuesday, October 30: "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." Jon Kabat-Zinn

Monday, October 29: "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." Albert Einstein

Week of October 22

Friday, October 26: "Quality is conformance to requirements." Philip Crosby

Thursday, October 25: "I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM

Wednesday, October 24: “Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.” Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo

Tuesday, October 23: “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else." Sara Blakely, Founder of Spanx

Monday, October 22: "Quality is everyone's responsibility." W. Edwards Deming

Week of October 15

Friday, October 19: "The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping stone in the pathway of the strong." Thomas Carlyle

Thursday, October 18: “True leaders understand that leadership is not about them but about those they serve. It is not about exalting themselves but about lifting others up.” Sheri L. Dew

Wednesday, October 17: "Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” Sheryl Sandberg

Tuesday, October 16: "Without passion, there is no genius." Theodor Mommsen

Monday, October 15: “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” Dianne Feinstein

Week of October 8

Friday, October 12: "Don't cling to a mistake simply because you spent a lot of time making it." Anonymous

Thursday, October 11: “Don’t waste a single second. Just move forward as fast as you can, and go for it.” Rebecca Woodcock, Cake Health

Wednesday, October 10: “As a leader, it’s a major responsibility on your shoulders to practice the behavior you want others to follow.” Himanshu Bhatia, Rose International Inc.

Tuesday, October 9: "Everyone must row with the oars he or she has." Dutch proverb

Monday, October 8: "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady

Week of October 1

Friday, October 5: "We treat our people like royalty. If you honor and serve the people who work for you, they will honor and serve you.” Mary Kay Ash

Thursday, October 4: "My father had a simple test that helps me measure my own leadership quotient: When you are out of the office, he once asked me, 'Does your staff carry on remarkable well without you?'” Martha Peak, AMA magazines

Wednesday, October 3: “Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes.” Margaret Wheatley, writer

Tuesday, October 2: “Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” Mary D. Poole

Monday, October 1: “We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.” Queen Victoria, Former Queen of the United Kingdom

Week of September 24

Friday, September 28: “If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are an excellent leader.” Dolly Parton

Thursday, September 27: "A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it." Chinese proverb

Wednesday, September 26: “My best successes came on the heels of failures.” Barbara Corcoran

Tuesday, September 25: "Wherever you are is the entry point." Kabir

Monday, September 24: "Strategic leaders must not get consumed by the operational and tactical side of their work. They have a duty to find time to shape the future." Stephanie S. Mead, CMOE

Week of September 17

Friday, September 21: "The only safe ship in a storm is leadership." Faye Wattleton, Alvarez & Marsal

Thursday, September 20: “We do not need magic to change the world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.” J.K. Rowling

Wednesday, September 19: "The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have." Sheryl Sandberg

Tuesday, September 18: "Your customers may not be always right, but sometimes they are always right." Douglas C. Krumm, Sr. Project Manager, Rockwell Collins

Monday, September 17: "The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems." Peter Senge

Week of September 10

Friday, September 14: "Partial understanding of and involvement in quality can produce only partial success or total failure." Townsend and Gebhardt

Thursday, September 13: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” Jane Goodall

Wednesday, September 12: "We move families, not just furniture." Allied Van Lines

Tuesday, September 11: "Everyone wants better quality and lower costs, but just doing what comes naturally or what is recommended by some consultant may backfire." Rafael Aguayo

Monday, September 10: "There is no substitute for hard work." Thomas Edison

Week of September 3

Friday, September 7: “The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.” Iyanla Vanzant

Thursday, September 6: "Nothing happens unless first a dream." Carl Sandburg

Wednesday, September 5: "Quality cannot be copied; there is no step-by-step cookbook that applies equally to all company situations and cultures." Ernst & Young

Tuesday, September 4: “No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.” Martha Beck

Monday, September 3: Labor Day, USA

Week of August 27

Friday, August 31: "The problem of quality management is not what people don't know about it. The problem is what they think they do know." Philip Crosby

Thursday, August 30: "Hitch your wagon to a star." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wednesday, August 29: "You can't sell from an empty wagon." Charles Tandy, Tandy Corporation

Tuesday, August 28: "All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monday, August 27: "A 'problem' is the distance between where you are now and where you could be, no matter how good you are now." Townsend and Gebhardt

Week of August 20

Friday, August 24: "Little strokes fell great oaks." Benjamin Franklin

Thursday, August 23: "If you cannot solve the real problem, change it into one you can solve." Mark Kac, mathematician

Wednesday, August 22: "The key is to get into the stores and listen." Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

Tuesday, August 21: "Changing the culture of an institution is a slow process, and one that is best not rushed. If the effects of TQM are to be lasting, people have to want to be on board." Edward Sallis

Monday, August 20: "If there is one consistent lesson from those who have led this effort [toward continuous improvement], it is that there is no universal strategy for success." V. Daniel Hunt

Week of August 13

Friday, August 17: "Effective statistical process control is 10% statistics and 90% management action." John Hradesky

Thursday, August 16: “You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” Tina Fey

Wednesday, August 15: "The best way to understand your customer is to become your customer and walk a mile in his shoes." Ian D. Littman

Tuesday, August 14: "There is one basic cause of all effects." Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher

Monday, August 13: "Great things are not done by impulse...but by a series of small things brought together." Vincent Van Gogh

Week of August 6

Friday, August 10: "The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none." Thomas Carlyle

Thursday, August 9: "Failure is simply a reason to strengthen resolve." John W. Gardner

Wednesday, August 8: "We can be creative in our approach but never compromising in our quality." Jim Nelson (Lonza)

Tuesday, August 7: "You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” Leymah Gbowee, Nobel laureate

Monday, August 6: “Everyone shines, given the right lighting.” Susan Cain, author

Week of July 30

Friday, August 3: "Error is always in haste." Thomas Fuller

Thursday, August 2: "Quality improvement at a revolutionary pace is now becoming simply good management." A. Blanton Godfrey

Wednesday, August 1: "Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." Theodore Levitt

Tuesday, July 31: "The first job in decision making is to find the real problem and define it." Peter Drucker

Monday, July 30: "Quality improvement is a fragile process. All major processes are." Edward Sallis

Week of July 23

Friday, July 27: "If you can’t go straight ahead, you go around the corner." Cher

Thursday, July 26: "To err is human, but to be paid for it is divine." H. James Harrington

Wednesday, July 25: "Fear always represents objects in their worst light." Livy

Tuesday, July 24: "If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more." Erica Jong

Monday, July 23: "A leader teaches with patience. A manager without patience is no leader." Rafael Aguayo

Week of July 16

Friday, July 20: "Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not." Neil deGrasse Tyson

Thursday, July 19: "One picture is worth more than a thousand words." Anonymous

Wednesday, July 18: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle

Tuesday, July 17: "Quality isn't expensive; it's priceless." Anonymous

Monday, July 16: “If you’re not making some notable mistakes along the way, you’re certainly not taking enough business and career chances.” Sallie Krawcheck

Week of July 9

Friday, July 13: "'The institutional leader...is primarily an expert in the promotion and protection of values." Philip Selznick

Thursday, July 12: "Two wrongs can never make a right." English Proverb

Wednesday, July 11: "The market is never saturated with a good product but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one." Henry Ford

Tuesday, July 10: "With the customer as a reference point, priorities become easier to set." Mary Walton

Monday, July 9: “The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves.” Barbara Corcoran

Week of July 2

Friday, July 6: "'What is our business?' is not determined by the producer but by the customer." Peter Drucker

Thursday, July 5: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Wednesday, July 4: Independence Day holiday (USA)

Tuesday, July 3: "No one knows what it is that he can do until he tries." Publilius Syrus

Monday, July 2: "Customer needs and satisfaction are constantly changing targets." Juran Institute, Inc.

Week of June 25

Friday, June 29: "Quality control is applicable to any kind of enterprise; in fact, it must be applied to every enterprise." Kaoru Ishikawa

Thursday, June 28: "Quality thinking is the same as profitable thinking in the long term." Wasi Asghar, Suminter India Organics

Wednesday, June 27: "The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas." George Santayana

Tuesday, June 26: "Consumers, by seeking quality and value, set the standards of acceptability for products and services by voting with their marketplace dollars." Ronald Reagan

Monday, June 25: “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” Coco Chanel

Week of June 18

Friday, June 22: "Manage from the left side of the brain; lead from the right." Steven Covey

Thursday, June 21: "Managers do things right, leaders do the right things." Bennis and Nanus

Wednesday, June 20: "Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Tuesday, June 19: “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart

Monday, June 18: "I believe the leader's ultimate job is to spread hope." Bob Galvin, Motorola

Week of June 11

Friday, June 15: "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." Albert Einstein

Thursday, June 14: "Human beings are more alike than one would think at first." Abraham Maslow

Wednesday, June 13: "The biggest challenge in maintaining a quality management system is ensuring consistency in established practice, in a consistently changing business environment." Sng Yang Seng, senior manager, quality assurance, LSG ST Electronics

Tuesday, June 12: "In the best institutions, promises are kept no matter what the cost in agony and overtime." David Ogilvy

Monday, June 11: "The spirit of the thing lives in the details." Mies van der Rohe

Week of June 4

Friday, June 8: "He who runs his company on visible figures alone will soon have neither company nor visible figures to work with." W. Edwards Deming

Thursday, June 7: "It’s not the absence of fear, it’s overcoming it. Sometimes you’ve got to blast through and have faith.” Emma Watson

Wednesday, June 6: "I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty." John D. Rockefeller

Tuesday, June 5: "Unless the problem is prevented from happening again, root cause is just a theory." Govind Ramu, Program Manager, Google, Mountain View, Calif.

Monday, June 4: "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." John Steinbeck

Week of May 28

Friday, June 1: "Failure is a matter of self-conceit. Men don't work hard because, in their self-conceit, they think they are so clever that they'll succeed without working hard." Thomas Edison

Thursday, May 31: "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." Alfred North Whitehead

Wednesday, May 30: “I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.” Estée Lauder

Tuesday, May 29: "Where is quality made? Quality is made in the boardroom." W. Edwards Deming

Monday, May 28: Memorial Day holiday (USA)

Week of May 21

Friday, May 25: "People learn most rapidly when they have a genuine sense of responsibility for their actions." Peter Senge

Thursday, May 24: "Wisely and slowly; they stumble that run fast." William Shakespeare

Wednesday, May 23: "It has been well said that the effective leader must know the meaning and master the technique of the educator." Philip Selznick

Tuesday, May 22: “A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.” Angela Merkel

Monday, May 21: "There is no substitute for hard work." Thomas Edison

Week of May 14

Friday, May 18: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” Jane Goodall

Thursday, May 17: "Quality is when customer satisfaction goes far north and when scrap and rework rates go way south." Paul Tang, quality and project manager

Wednesday, May 16: "The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question." Peter Drucker

Tuesday, May 15: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Monday, May 14: “Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” Golda Meir

Week of May 7

Friday, May 11: "Preaching quality won't help." Hammer and Champy

Thursday, May 10: "Our reputation for quality is only as good as our last machine or our last customer call." Frank Cary

Wednesday, May 9: "The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators." Edward Gibbon

Tuesdsay, May 8: "Organizational excellence is not about the management of quality. It is about the quality of management." Haim Berman

Monday, May 7: "I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty." John D. Rockefeller

Week of April 30

Friday, May 4: "Empowerment is all about letting go so that others can get going." Jack Welch

Thursday, May 3: "Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." Dwight Eisenhower

Wednesday, May 2: "I need to listen well so that I hear what is not said.” Thuli Madonsela

Tuesday, May 1: “When you’re through changing, you’re through.” Martha Stewart

Monday, April 30: "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" John Wooden

Week of April 23

Friday, April 27: "The price for ignoring the impact of design on service can be staggering." Davidow and Uttal

Thursday, April 26: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." English Proverb

Wednesday, April 25: "The secret to preparing for success is no secret at all." Robb E. Dalton

Tuesday, April 24: "Coordination and productive use of differences should be achieved by group decision making processes used skillfully throughout the company." Rensis Likert

Monday, April 23: "The team concept conveys the message that PQI (Productivity and Quality Improvement) is everybody's business." John Hradesky

Week of April 16

Friday, April 20: "My first message is: Listen, listen, listen to the people who do the work." H. Ross Perot

Thursday, April 19: "Only through the collective efforts of their individual members do companies change; companies are incapable of changing themselves." V. Daniel Hunt

Wednesday, April 18: "Despite what the textbooks say, most important decisions in corporate life are made by individuals, not by committees." Lee Iacocca

Tuesday, April 17: "One good head is better than a hundred strong hands." Thomas Fuller

Monday, April 16: "High-quality companies treat their human resource as a resource, not a commodity." Steven George

Week of April 9

Friday, April 13: "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it." Henry Ford

Thursday, April 12: "Compliance is an intended consequence of quality." Paula Burdick Parsons, CMQ/OE

Wednesday, April 11: "The most difficult problem to solve is employee indifference: people closing their eyes and choosing to do nothing." Katsuyoshi Ishihara

Tuesday, April 10: "If management thinks people don't care, it's likely that people won't care." F. James McDonald, General Motors

Monday, April 9: "What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing." Louis Pasteur

Week of April 2

Friday, April 6: "When we stop improving, we start to slip backward." H. James Harrington

Thursday, April 5: "Treat the small as great and the few as many." Lao-tzu

Wednesday, April 4: “Don’t live life in the past lane.” Samantha Ettus, American Author

Tuesday, April 3: "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." Anonymous

Monday, April 2: "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator." Francis Bacon

Week of March 26

Friday, March 30: "All good things which exist are the fruits of originality." John Stuart Mill

Thursday, March 29: "Management's job is not to promote satisfaction with the way things are, but to create dissatisfaction with the way things are and could be." Edward M. Baker

Wednesday, March 28: "Quality is when the customer returns and the product does not." Tim Robertson

Tuesday, March 27: "We only get one chance to do it right the first time." Jeffrey S. Schiopota, Aspire Brands

Monday, March 26: "Develop a healthy disrespect for the impossible." Gene Hoffman, SuperValu Inc.

Week of March 19

Friday, March 23: "No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess." Isaac Newton

Thursday, March 22: "The mind is slow to unlearn what it has been long in learning." Seneca

Wednesday, March 21: "The new idea either finds a champion or dies." Edward Schon

Tuesday, March 20: "Some men see things as they are, and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were, and say, 'Why not?'" Bernard Shaw

Monday, March 19: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world." Albert Einstein

Week of March 12

Friday, March 16: "Most managers are reluctant to let their people run with the ball. But you'd be surprised how fast an informed and motivated guy can run." Lee Iacocca

Thursday, March 15: "Management's principal job is to get the herd heading roughly west." Peters and Waterman

Wednesday, March 14: "A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words." Thomas Huxley

Tuesday, March 13: "The best way to predict the future is to create it." Peter Drucker

Monday, March 12: "If you have to remind people that you are the leader, then you are not." Jorge Zegarra, Director, COS Training Resource Center

Week of March 5

Friday, March 9: "Quality control and standardization are extremely closely linked." Katsuya Hosotani

Thursday, March 8: "Quality needs to be constantly improved, but it is just as necessary to make sure that quality never deteriorates." Shigeru Mizuno

Wednesday, March 7: "Self-generated quality control is more effective than inspector-generated quality control." Thomas J. Peters

Tuesday, March 6: "The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher." Thomas Huxley

Monday, March 5: "The customers do not feel the average. They feel the variation." Tom Groark

Week of February 26

Friday, March 2: "There is no such thing as a perfect method. Methods always can be improved upon." Walter Daiber

Thursday, March 1: "An environment which calls for perfection is not likely to be easy. But aiming for it is always a goad to progress." Thomas Watson, Jr.

Wednesday, February 28: "Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things." Diderot

Tuesday, February 27: "That which we persist in doing becomes easier – not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday, February 26: "Do not let the tiniest problem escape your notice. Remember: little brooks grow into mighty rivers." Katsuyoshi Ishihara

Week of February 19

Friday, February 23: "Thee findeth a solution and I promise thee to findeth another problem to mull. . . ." Sameer B. Chougle

Thursday, February 22: "Running a company by profit alone is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror. It tells you where you've been, not where you are going." Rafael Aguayo

Wednesday, February 21: "Quality comes not from inspection but from improvement of the process." Mary Walton

Tuesday, February 20: "Effective solutions to any problem circumvent blame and begin with you." Amy E. Smith, reliability technician, Bayer HealthCare

Monday, February 19: "Some say, 'You only get what you measure.' I say, 'And that's all you get!'" A. Donald Stratton

Week of February 12

Friday, February 16: "The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have." Sheryl Sandberg

Thursday, February 15: "Quality improvement will result from people improving their processes and from management improving the system." Thomas Pyzdek

Wednesday, February 14: "Quality is not an act; it is a habit." Aristotle

Tuesday, February 13: "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." Henry Ford

Monday, February 12: "I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have." Coleman Cox

Week of February 5

Friday, February 9: "The concept of managing the moments of truth is the very essence of service management." Albrecht and Zemke

Thursday, February 8: "No dream comes true until you wake up and go to work." Herbert V. Prochnow

Wednesday, February 7: "If change is to occur, it must come about through hard work within the organization itself." Gordon Lippitt

Tuesday, February 6: "In the USA, about a third of what we do consists of redoing work previously 'done.'" Joseph M. Juran

Monday, February 5: "We have 50,000 moments of truth out there every day." Jan Carlzon

Week of January 29

Friday, February 2: "To change is to risk something. That makes us insecure. Not to change is the bigger risk, but it seldom feels that way." Robert H. Waterman, Jr.

Thursday, February 1: "The only stability possible is stability in motion." John W. Gardner

Wednesday, January 31: "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." Søren Kierkegaard

Tuesday, January 30: "No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo

Monday, January 29: "You've got to be willing to fail." James Burke (Johnson & Johnson)

Week of January 22

Friday, January 26: "The process of change (like charity) begins with the individual." Harry Forsha

Thursday, January 25: "Quality is the degree of excellence at an acceptable price and the control of variability at an acceptable cost." Robert A. Broh

Wednesday, January 24: "Continuous improvement is nothing but the development of ever better methods." Mary Walton

Tuesday, January 23: "Once you adopt and communicate a quality policy, stick with it, live it, and protect it. You get only one chance!" Thomas Berry

Monday, January 22: "The transformation to world-class quality is not possible without committed, visionary, hands-on leadership." Steven George

Week of January 15

Friday, January 19: "The only way to get people to adopt constant improvement as a way of life in doing daily business is by empowering them." Byham and Cox

Thursday, January 18: "To desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly." Confucius

Wednesday, January 17: "In considering quality, it is often necessary to turn your thinking upside down and to realize that quality and profit are not mutually exclusive." Shigeru Mizuno

Tuesday, January 16: "The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage." Arie De Geus, Royal Dutch/Shell

Monday, January 15: "In world-class organizations, working to improve quality is not an extracurricular activity. It is a minimum requirement." Chang, Labovitz, and Rosansky

Week of January 8

Friday, January 12: "Benchmarking means out-maneuvering your competitors." Allan Sayle, Quality Author

Thursday, January 11: "You can't learn anything when you're trying to look like the smartest person in the room." Barbara Kingsolver, Novelist

Wednesday, January 10: "Service is not a competitive edge, it is the competitive edge." Albrecht and Zemke

Tuesday, January 9: "Change begins at the top." John Hradesky

Monday, January 8: "Nobody will take his eyes off the income statement or put his heart on the line without constant demonstration of support from the top." Davidow and Uttal

Week of January 2

Friday, January 5: "There's no great success without great commitment." Tony Robbins

Thursday, January 4: "Quality is not a task done to products, services, processes, or people; it is what we collaboratively embrace, commit to, and present as an entire organization." Amy E. Smith, Reliability Technician, Bayer HealthCare

Wednesday, January 3: "Quality is a value and a method and both must be routine." Karen L. Hansen, Director of Quality Assurance and Compliance, Allied Community Resources

Tuesday, January 2: "Commitment is measured in terms of visible and tangible things, not in terms of rhetoric." Murgatroyd and Morgan

Monday, January 1: Happy New Year! 

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