Quality Quotes
Every weekday, ASQ features a different one-sentence take on the world of quality.
If you have a favorite Quality Quote of your own, email it to us for consideration. Due to the number of submissions that ASQ receives, and in the interests of featuring a variety of voices, please limit your quotes to one per person per quarter.
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!
Week of December 25
ASQ headquarters closed. Happy Holidays!
Week of December 18
Friday, December 22: "Don't cross the bridge until you get to it." English Proverb
Thursday, December 21: "What gets measured gets done." Mason Haire
Wednesday, December 20: "Work that delights the customer must fulfill the totality of Time (delivered on schedule), Quality (satisfies requirements for use), and Cost (delivered at the right price), or TQC." Sng Yang Seng, senior manager, quality assurance, LSG ST Electronics
Tuesday, December 19: "The risk of not deciding is often the greatest of all risks to the organization." Everard and Morris
Monday, December 18: "Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts." Albert Einstein
Week of December 11
Friday, December 15: "Quality depends on good data. It also depends on executive leadership in using that data." Juran Institute, Inc.
Thursday, December 14: "Whatever is worth doing is worth evaluating." Wynn and Guditus
Wednesday, December 13: "What we get, and all we ever get, from the outside is information; how we choose to act on this information is up to us." William Glasser
Tuesday, December 12: "Never give the customer the opportunity to look elsewhere." James Cutler, Line Operator, Ring Container Technologies
Monday, December 11: "The world-class organization is continuously bathed in a stream of integrated data." Chang, Labovitz, and Rosansky
Week of December 4
Friday, December 8: "A thousand probabilities do not make one fact." Italian Proverb
Thursday, December 7: "Between knowledge of what really exists and ignorance of what does not exist lies the domain of opinion. It is more obscure than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance." Plato
Wednesday, December 6: "Leaders don't invent motivation in their followers, they unlock it." John W. Gardner
Tuesday, December 5: "A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes." Claude Bernard
Monday, December 4: "It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am not sure that figures show us whether it is being ruled well or badly." Goethe
Week of November 27
Friday, December 1: "Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded." Virginia Woolf
Thursday, November 30: "The smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen." Aldous Huxley
Wednesday, November 29: "The best prophet of the future is the past." Lord Byron
Tuesday, November 28: "The carpenter's rule is 'measure twice, cut once.'" Stephen Covey
Monday, November 27: "Both processes and results are important for a well-functioning system. Processes without results are useless, and results without processes are unsustainable." Govind Ramu, SunPower Corporation
Week of November 20
Friday, November 24: Thanksgiving (Observed)
Thursday, November 23: Thanksgiving (United States)
Wednesday, November 22: "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." Francis Bacon
Tuesday, November 21: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley
Monday, November 20: "Truth is more important than the facts." Frank Lloyd Wright
Week of November 13
Friday, November 17: "A successful TQM organization [is] based on facts and genuine understanding, rather than rumor and assumptions." Murgatroyd and Morgan
Thursday, November 16: “A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.” Angela Merkel
Wednesday, November 15: "What we know prevents us from seeing what is and what can be." Micah Woodard, behavioral health director, Western Oregon Service Unit
Tuesday, November 14: Small improvements are believable and therefore achievable." Anthony Robbins
Monday, November 13: "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." H. G. Wells
Week of November 6
Friday, November 10: "The message of the kaizen strategy is that not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company." Masaaki Imai
Thursday, November 9: "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Thomas Jefferson
Wednesday, November 8: "Experimentation is the lifeblood of the high-value enterprise, because customization requires continuous trial and error." Robert B. Reich
Tuesday, November 7: "It is only when management supports, in both word and deed, the goal of continuous improvement, that it will begin to see increases in both quality and productivity." Wheeler and Chambers
Monday, November 6: "Only mediocre people are always at their best." W. Somerset Maugham
Week of October 30
Friday, November 3: "You manage what you measure." Anonymous
Thursday, November 2: "It is the first of all problems for a man to find what kind of work he is to do in this universe." Thomas Carlyle
Wednesday, November 1: "If you do not get it right the first time, what will you change to do better the second or third time?" Ronald L. Post, principal quality engineer, Westinghouse Electric Co.
Tuesday, October 31: "All of life is education and everybody is a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil." Abraham Maslow
Monday, October 30: "The theory doesn't mean anything unless it is accompanied by the practice. The important thing is to start now. Get your hands dirty. Find the problems. And fix them." Takashi Osada
Week of October 23
Friday, October 27: "Employee satisfaction is the first and fundamental step on the way to customer satisfaction." Shaymaa Hegazy, IBM Client Innovation Center, Malaysia
Thursday, October 26: "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without." Confucius
Wednesday, October 25: "As for self-actualization, even Mozart had to wait until he was three or four." Abraham Maslow
Tuesday, October 24: "The free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world." John Steinbeck
Monday, October 23: "The three building blocks of business are hardware, software and 'humanware.' Total quality control starts with humanware." Masaaki Imai
Week of October 16
Friday, October 20: "Corporations need to become people factories—places that develop people—not human warehouses that only produce window watchers." A. William Wiggenhorn (Motorola University)
Thursday, October 19: "The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization." Peter Senge
Wednesday, October 18: "In an ideal world, inspection should not be necessary, and the goal should always be to minimize the need for inspection through the continuous improvement of processes." David Hutchins
Tuesday, October 17: "Wisdom denotes the pursuit of the best ends by the best means." Francis Hutcheson, Philosopher
Monday, October 16: "The genius of the leadership function is articulating a vision of the future that is at once simple, easily understood, clearly desirable, and energizing." Bennis and Nanus
Week of October 9
Friday, October 13: "The ability to deal with people is as purchaseable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability than any other under the sun." John D. Rockefeller
Thursday, October 12: "The problem is not to get people to do what they are told, but to do what they are not told or even what they can't be told." Richard Cornuelle, Author
Wednesday, October 11: "Leadership is more than just leading; it is providing opportunities for others to grow and to contribute more to the overall achievements of the organization." Wynn and Guditus
Tuesday, October 10: "If management is split about teams, implementing them won't work, plain and simple." Deborah Harrington-Mackin
Monday, October 9: "We know what we are, but know not what we may be." William Shakespeare
Week of October 2
Friday, October 6: "There can be no freedom without the freedom to fail." Eric Hofer, American Philosopher
Thursday, October 5: "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the many sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom." Bertrand Russell
Wednesday, October 4: "Effective delegation is perhaps the best indicator of effective management simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth." Stephen Covey
Tuesday, October 3: "If you do not expect much, you will not get much." Phill Hagan, quality supervisor, The Timken Company
Monday, October 2: "A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." Bernard Shaw
Week of September 25
Friday, September 29: "Difficult things take a long time; the impossible takes a little longer." Anonymous
Thursday, September 28: "All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem." Martin Luther King Jr.
Wednesday, September 27: "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." Thomas Jefferson
Tuesday, September 26: "Leadership fails when it concentrates on sheer survival." Philip Selznick
Monday, September 25: "Total quality management depends on people more than anything else, and people lead or are led—they are not managed." Daniel V. Hunt
Week of September 18
Friday, September 22: "Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." Stephen Covey
Thursday, September 21: "Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life." Germaine Greer, Author
Wednesday, September 20: "Fear is the primary block to creativity." Ernst & Young
Tuesday, September 19: "World-class leaders work for their people." Chang, Labovitz, and Rosansky, Quality Authors
Monday, September 18: "Quality without production or service does not exist, and production or service without quality has no value." Wasi Asghar, Suminter India Organics
Week of September 11
Friday, September 15: "A leader is a dealer in hope." Napoleon Bonaparte
Thursday, September 14: "First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people." Leo Rosten, Writer
Wednesday, September 13: "The leader must have infectious optimism." Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
Tuesday, September 12: "Come with ten, leave with ten (fingers and toes)." Larry Roberts, Quality Control Manager, CMC Howell Metal
Monday, September 11: "Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, 'like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.'" Stephen Covey
Week of September 4
Friday, September 8: "Organizations are to be sailed rather than driven." James March
Thursday, September 7: "If you don't generate excitement, you don't generate much." Bill Marriott
Wednesday, September 6: "The quality journey starts with commitment and ends in empowerment." Kathavarayan Raju, Head of Quality-Subsea Projects & Products APAC
Tuesday, September 5: "The fact that the captain of the ship can clearly see the port is of no use if the crew continues to paddle in different directions." Townsend and Gebhardt
Monday, September 4: Labor Day Holiday (United States)
Week of August 28
Friday, September 1: "Man will err while yet he strives." Goethe
Thursday, August 31: "Poor quality is like a disease. Identifying and treating it early is better than facing the consequences later." Rafiq Darji, construction and materials engineer, US Department of Transportation
Wednesday, August 30: "Everyone in the company is the CEO's customer." Frederick W. Smith, CEO, FedEx
Tuesday, August 29: "There are no simple tricks for eliminating blame. You simply must stop doing it." Juran Institute, Inc.
Monday, August 28: "There is little chance that your customers will be excited about your products or services unless your workers are." Ernst & Young
Week of August 21
Friday, August 25: "I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." Thomas Edison
Thursday, August 24: "The economic losses from fear are appalling. To assure better quality and productivity, it is necessary that people feel secure." Mary Walton
Wednesday, August 23: "Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threatens all the basic needs." Abraham Maslow, Psychologist
Tuesday, August 22: "If the problem is vague and unobservable, the same will be true for the solution." Plsek and Onnias
Monday, August 21: "Chance is a word devoid of sense; nothing can exist without a cause." Voltaire.
Week of August 14
Friday, August 18: "Ideals and Standards - Actual Conditions = Problems." Sigeru Nakamura
Thursday, August 17: "For there are few things as useless—if not as dangerous—as the right answer to the wrong question." Peter Drucker, Quality Innovator
Wednesday, August 16: "No accomplishment is small unless we put a material value to it. No contribution is small unless we seek credit for it". Govind Ramu, Senior Director Global QMS, SunPower Corporation
Tuesday, August 15: "A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved." Anonymous
Monday, August 14: "The easy way out usually leads back in." Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at MIT Sloan School of Management
Week of August 7
Friday, August 11: "Not being able to see any problem is itself a problem." Shigeru Mizuno, Training Content Developer
Thursday, August 10: "Life is a continual problem-solving process." Katsuya Hosotani, Author
Wednesday, August 9: "Mediocrity is the result when fear of failure permeates an organization." William Scherkenbach, Quality Consultant
Tuesday, August 8: "You could use the handle of a screwdriver to hammer a nail, but the best tool to use is a hammer.” Shigeru Nakamura
Monday, August 7: “Where there is no standard, there can be no kaizen.” Taiichi Ohno, Creator of the Toyota Production System
Week of July 31
Friday, August 4: "Unless you change the process, the outcome will remain the same." Gary Malcolm, Quality Manager, KSM Industries, Inc.
Thursday, August 3: "Once in a while you come up with something for which there is no solution. Then you make a judgment and accept the situation, and life goes on. Count on one or two per career." Philip Crosby, Quality Guru
Wednesday, August 2: "It is time to stop perpetuating the myth of simplicity. The system of organization invented by mankind generates complex problems that cannot be solved by simple solutions." Ralph H. Kilmann, Author
Tuesday, August 1: "You need the ability to fail. You cannot innovate unless you are willing to accept mistakes." Charles Knight, Chairman Emeritus, Emerson Electric
Monday, July 31: "Nothing is so much to be feared as fear." Henry David Thoreau, Poet, Essayist, and Philosopher
Week of July 24
Thursday, July 27: "It may be said that those who succeed in problem-solving in quality control are those who succeed in making a useful cause-and-effect diagram." Hitoshi Kume, Author
Thursday, July 27: "Quality is an asset—not a cost or afterthought; it is insurance that the product will meet the customer's true needs with uninterrupted delivery and ample performance." Bill Minckler, Program and Project Portfolio Management, State of Ohio Job and Family Services
Wednesday, July 26: "A 'problem' is the gap between the existing situation and the ideal situation or objective." Katsuya Hosotani, Author
Tuesday, July 25: "Bad quality acts like a boomerang. It will eventually come back and hit you." Paul Tang, Quality and Project Manager
Monday, July 24: "Ignorance never settles a question." Benjamin Disraeli, Former British Prime Minister
Week of July 17
Friday, July 21: "If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem." Jiddu Krishnamurti, Philosopher
Thursday, July 20: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana, Philosopher
Wednesday, July 19: "He is always right who suspects that he makes mistakes." Spanish proverb
Tuesday, July 18: "The way we see the problem is the problem." Steven Covey, Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Monday, July 17: "Brainstorming: The act of speaking before thinking." Capezio and Morehouse, Quality Authors
Week of July 10
Friday, July 14: "The rightness or wrongness of an intuition is finally decided not by intuition itself but by the usual method of proof." Jerome S. Bruner, Educational Psychologist
Thursday, July 13: "There is no learning without mistakes." Mary Walton, American Inventor
Wednesday, July 12: "How many 'fixes' backfire because the assumptions on which the fix was based turn out to be false?" Murgatroyd and Morgan, Authors
Tuesday, July 11: "The more complex the task, the better it serves as preparation for a more complicated task the next time. One puzzle leads to another." Robert B. Reich, Political Commentator, Professor, and Author
Monday, July 10: "There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer." Peter Drucker, Quality Management Guru
Week of July 3
Friday, July 7: "Leadership is a transfer of belief." Jon Gordon, Author
Thursday, July 6: "If you don't fail some of the time, you're not trying." Thomas J. Peters, Author of In Search of Excellence
Wednesday, July 5: "While pursuing quality, design for routine and prepare for adventure." Haim Berman, A Voice for Quality
Tuesday, July 4: United States Holiday
Monday, July 3: "For every complex question there is a simple answer, and it is wrong." H. L. Mencken, Journalist
Week of June 26
Friday, June 30: "The worst thing a person can do is to ignore or cover up a problem." Masaaki Imai, Kaizen Pioneer
Thursday, June 29: "The true creator is necessity, which is the mother of our invention." Plato, Greek Philosopher
Wednesday, June 28: "There is no such thing as failure. There are only results." Tony Robbins, Motivational Speaker
Tuesday, June 27: "People do not just buy things, they also buy expectations." Albrecht and Zemke, Authors
Monday, June 26: "The intuitive thinker may even invent or discover problems that the analyst would not. But it may be the analyst who gives these problems the proper formalism." Jerome S. Bruner, Psychologist
Week of June 19
Friday, June 23: "All problems become smaller if, instead of indulging them, you confront them. Touch a thistle timidly and it pricks you; grasp it boldly and its spine crumbles." William S. Halsey, United States Navy
Thursday, June 22: "Failure is the seed of success." Kaoru Ishikawa, Quality Guru
Wednesday, June 21: "The mission of the quality department is to hold back the forces of production until the customer has been prepared." Anonymous
Tuesday, June 20: "If I wasn't making mistakes, I wasn't making decisions." General R.W. Johnson II, Founder of Johnson & Johnson
Monday, June 19: "When the customer says, 'That ain't it,' then that, in fact, ain't it." John Guaspari, Author
Week of June 12
Friday, June 16: "Quality, like anything else worth doing, doesn't just happen. It's not like tomorrow; you can't just wait and it will come to you." H. James Harrington, Author
Thursday, June 15: "The recipe for action should consist of 90 percent substance and 10 percent exhortation." Joseph M. Juran, Forefather of Quality
Wednesday, June 14: "Progress is impossible without the ability to admit mistakes." Masaaki Imai, Kaizen Pioneer
Tuesday, June 13: "Energy and persistence conquer all things." Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
Monday, June 12: "The first faults are theirs that commit them; the second faults are theirs that permit them." Thomas Fuller, Historian
Week of June 5
Thursday, June 8: "Mistakes live in the neighborhood of truth and therefore delude us." Rabindranath Tagor, Author
Wednesday, June 7: “Many people who could not give their best because they were denied the opportunity. We must harness the capabilities of each person to encourage organizational success.” Ramesh Lohia and Pavan Lohia, Consultants, iSixSigmaKaizen
Tuesday, June 6: "Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises." Samuel Butler, Author
Monday, June 5: "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." Oscar Wilde, Playwright
Week of May 29
Friday, June 2: "Take away the cause, and the effect ceases." - Cervantes, Writer
Thursday, June 1: "A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage." - Ed Land, Founder of Polaroid
Wednesday, May 31: "Fear is a bad guardian for a thing that ought to last." - Cicero, Roman Politician
Tuesday, May 30: "I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who." - Rudyard Kipling, Poet
Monday, May 29: Memorial Day (United States)
Week of May 22
Friday, May 26: "True problem solving is impossible with the type of behavior that tries to shift the responsibility on to others." - Katsuya Hosotani, Author
Thursday, May 25: "Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas." (Fortunate who was able to know the causes of things.) - Virgil, Poet
Wednesday, May 24: "Nothing has the power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life." - Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor
Tuesday, May 23: "To truly appreciate the value of Quality, first make Quality a value. - Eleke Ukpabi
Monday, May 22: "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Week of May 15
Friday, May 19: "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." -Jonathan Swift
Thursday, May 18: "Achieving quality is difficult. If it weren't, more people would do it, and they don't, so it is." -John Guaspari
Wednesday, May 17: "The journey toward excellence is a never-ending road. Some people, because they see no end to their road, never take the first step." - H. James Harrington
Tuesday, May 16: "It is our experience that, 90 percent of the time, what passes for commitment is compliance." - Peter Senge
Monday, May 15: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham H. Maslow
Week of May 8
Friday, May 12: "It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible." - Thomas Huxley
Thursday, May 11: "You can choose one of these quality systems or another option or have it chosen for you, but you cannot choose not to have a quality system." - Steven George
Wednesday, May 10: "It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defects than to boast of our attainments." - Thomas Carlyle
Tuesday, May 9: "The road to continuous improvement is and must be an appropriately tailored, optimized, and personal one." - V. Daniel Hunt.
Monday, May 8: "Rewarding those who successfully fight quality fires but do not eliminate the root causes encourages arson." - Phil Scott, director, quality assurance, Chemring Energetic Devices
Week of May 1
Friday, May 5: "There are some remedies worse than the disease." - Publilius Syrus
Thursday, May 4: "Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."" - Peter Senge
Wednesday, May 3: "Quality is simple; people are complicated." - Harry Forsha
Tuesday, May 2: "To be effective, strategic management must be used as a tool – a means to an end – and not as the goal itself." - A. Blanton Godfrey
Monday, May 1: "There is never a shortage of challenges for people in industry." - Ronald G. Day
Week of April 24
Friday, April 28: "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness." - Christopher Society motto
Thursday, April 27: "Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." - David Hume
Wednesday, April 26: "Slogans, posters on the wall, appearances in company videos and at occasional in-house quality award ceremonies are always impersonal and inadequate." - Allan Sayle
Tuesday, April 25: "Well begun is half done." - Horace
Monday, April 24: "Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." - Goethe
Week of April 17
Friday, April 21: "A popular saying goes, "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." But solutions you don't see, you have to find. That's why we have quality engineers." - Zaheer Babar Khan
Thursday, April 20: "For every problem there is a solution: simple, neat, and wrong." - Mobil Oil Company
Wednesday, April 19: "Overreliance on experience, intuition, and gut feeling is a surefire way of increasing waste." - Katsuya Hosotani
Tuesday, April 18: "Cause and effect are two sides of one fact." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Monday, April 17: "Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion." - Hegel
Week of April 10
Friday, April 14: "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." - Robert Fritz
Thursday, April 13: "We believe a passion for excellence also carries a price, and we state it simply: the adventure of excellence is not for the faint of heart." - Peters and Austin
Wednesday, April 12: "That's what life is all about—timing." - Lee Iacocca
Tuesday, April 11: "Make sure you generate a reasonable number of mistakes." - Fletcher Byrom
Monday, April 10: "The wisest of the wise may err." - Aeschylus
Week of April 3
Friday, April 7: "Performance improvement claims in the absence of substantive, objective metrics are little more than expressions of opinion." - Jeff Donaldson, The Logistics Company, Inc.
Thursday, April 6: "It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example." - Fred Hoyle
Wednesday, April 5: "Quality—you can choose to take it or leave it, but the market will find ways to reciprocate." - Abhijit B. Mepadan, lean engineer, ASQ CSSBB
Tuesday, April 4: "Nobody yields to force unless he is forced to." - Bertolt Brecht
Monday, April 3: "Organizational excellence is not about the management of quality. It is about the quality of management." Haim Berman, A Voice for Quality