Quality Quotes

Week of December 28

Friday, January 1: ASQ closed for holiday

Thursday, December 31: ASQ closed for holiday

Wednesday, December 30: ASQ closed for holiday

Tuesday, December 29: ASQ closed for holiday

Monday, December 28: ASQ closed for holiday

Week of December 21

Friday, December 25: Christmas Day (U.S. Holiday)

Thursday, December 24: "Don’t think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money." Voltaire

Wednesday, December 23: "Note to salary setters: Pay your people the least possible and you’ll get from them the same." Malcolm Forbes

Tuesday, December 22: "A day’s pay for a day’s work is more than adequate when both the work and the pay are appreciated as much as they are expected." Cullen Hightower, writer

Monday, December 21: "Sure, sometimes guys pass you up in salary, and maybe it's a lesser player, but it's all based on what a team has as far as value in that person." Brett Favre

Week of December 14

Friday, December 18: "When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us." Julia Cameron, author

Thursday, December 17: "A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart." Jonathan Swift

Wednesday, December 16: "Money is usually attracted, not pursued." Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and motivational speaker

Tuesday, December 15: "Don’t let money run your life; let money help you run your life better." John Rampton, founder of Due

Monday, December 14: "If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it." Kim Garst, co-founder of Boom! Social

Week of December 7

Friday, December 11: "The art is not in making money, but in keeping it." Proverb

Thursday, December 10: "A salary was not sufficient for me." P.T. Barnum

Wednesday, December 9: "Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it." Timothy Ferriss, author

Tuesday, December 8: "I've always been petrified of working for a boss who I didn't like, but who I was in fear of, because I wanted my salary." Simon Cowell

Monday, December 7: "The man who counts his hours and kicks about his salary is a self-elected failure." Charles M. Schwab

Week of November 30

Friday, December 4: "Choose satisfaction over salary. Better to be happy with little than miserable with much." Max Lucado, author

Thursday, December 3: "Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company." James Sinegal, co-founder and former CEO of Costco Wholesale Corporation

Wednesday, December 2: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair

Tuesday, December 1: "Paying good wages is not charity at all—it is the best kind of business." Henry Ford

Monday, November 30: "Quality has to be caused, not controlled." Philip Crosby

Week of November 23

Friday, November 27: ASQ closed for holiday

Thursday, November 26: Thanksgiving Day (U.S. Holiday)

Wednesday, November 25: "The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs." W. Edwards Deming

Tuesday, November 24: "There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality of goods possible, at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible." Henry Ford

Monday, November 23: "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected." Steve Jobs

Week of November 16

Friday, November 20: "Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se." Charles Eames, industrial designer

Thursday, November 19: "The transformation to world-class quality is not possible without committed, visionary, hands-on leadership." Steven George

Wednesday, November 18: "Quality is conformance to requirements." Philip Crosby

Tuesday, November 17: "Quality needs to be constantly improved, but it is just as necessary to make sure that quality never deteriorates." Shigeru Mizuno, author

Monday, November 16: "Quality is everyone’s responsibility." W. Edwards Deming

Week of November 9

Friday, November 13: "Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives." William A. Foster

Thursday, November 12: "Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles." Steve Jobs

Wednesday, November 11: "It is quality rather than quantity that matters." Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Tuesday, November 10: "Quality is generally transparent when present, but easily recognized in its absence." Alan Gillies, author

Monday, November 9: "You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal." William S. Burroughs

Week of November 2

Friday, November 6: "Quality is to give the customers what they want." Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club

Thursday, November 5: "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." Henry Ford

Wednesday, November 4: "Do not compromise on the quality and your customers will not negotiate on the price." Amit Kalantri, author

Tuesday, November 3: "Quality is not an act, it is a habit." Aristotle

Monday, November 2: "When you're out of quality, you're out of business." Philip Crosby 

Week of October 26

Friday, October 30: "Improvement begins with ‘I.’" Arnold H. Glasow, author

Thursday, October 29: "The most effective way to do it is to do it." Amelia Earhart

Wednesday, October 28: "Practice the philosophy of continuous improvement: get a little bit better every single day." Brian Tracy, author and ‎motivational speaker

Tuesday, October 27: "Strive for continuous improvement instead of perfection." Kim Collins, athlete

Monday, October 26: "Invest a few moments in thinking; it will pay good interest." Unknown

Week of October 19

Friday, October 23: "Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good." Malcolm Gladwell

Thursday, October 22: "There is no such thing as a perfect method. Methods always can be improved upon." Walter Daiber

Wednesday, October 21: "Everything can be improved." Clarence W. Barron, publisher and former president of Dow Jones & Company

Tuesday, October 20: "If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well." Chinese Proverb

Monday, October 19: "Operational excellence is when each and every employee can see the flow of value to the customer, and fix that flow before it breaks down." Kevin Duggan, author

Week of October 12

Friday, October 16: "I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying." Michael Jordan

Thursday, October 15: "It is better to stir up a question without deciding it, than to decide it without stirring it up." Joseph Joubert, essayist

Wednesday, October 14: "One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent." Epictetus

Tuesday, October 13: "Everyone has the heart of a champion on game day. It’s the heart you have during the weeks, months, and years of preparation that actually makes a difference." John M. Raymond

Monday, October 12: "Process improvement programs are like teaching people how to fish. Strategy maps and scorecards teach people where to fish." Robert S. Kaplan, co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard

Week of October 5

Friday, October 9: "Most improved things can be improved." Mokokoma Mokhonoana, author

Thursday, October 8: "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." Colin Powell

Wednesday, October 7: "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." Albert Einstein

Tuesday, October 6: "The essential question is not, ‘How busy are you?’ but ‘What are you busy at?’'" Oprah Winfrey

Monday, October 5: "You either get bitter or you get better. It’s that simple." Josh Shipp, author and motivational speaker

Week of September 28

Friday, October 2: "Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection." Mark Twain

Thursday, October 1: "Don’t waste time learning the ‘tricks of the trade.’ Instead, learn the trade." James Charlton, author

Wednesday, September 30: "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." W. Edwards Deming

Tuesday, September 29: "Without standards, there can be no improvement." Taiichi Ohno

Monday, September 28: "The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking." Albert Einstein

Week of September 21

Friday, September 25: "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." Samuel Johnson, writer

Thursday, September 24: "Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best." Marva Collins, educator

Wednesday, September 23: "Excellence is not a skill; it is an attitude." Ralph Marston, American football player

Tuesday, September 22: "No man ever reached to excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation." Horace

Monday, September 21: "If you don’t have time to do it right, you must have time to do it over." John Wooden, basketball player and coach

Week of September 14

Friday, September 18: "Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters." Norman Ralph Augustine

Thursday, September 17: "Set high standards and few limitations for yourself." Anthony J. D'Angelo, author

Wednesday, September 16: "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." Wyatt Earp

Tuesday, September 15: "If you want to change your life you have to raise your standards." Tony Robbins, author and ‎motivational speaker

Monday, September 14: "If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow, you get somewhere." Henry Ford

Week of September 7

Friday, September 11: "Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good." Voltaire

Thursday, September 10: "Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings." C.D. Jackson

Wednesday, September 9: "If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Tuesday, September 8: "If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it over." Marian Wright Edelman, founder and former president of the Children's Defense Fund

Monday, September 7: Labor Day (U.S. Holiday)

Week of August 31

Friday, September 4: "Standards should not be forced down from above but rather set by the production workers themselves." Taiichi Ohno, founder of the Toyota Production System

Thursday, September 3: "If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else." Laurence J. Peter, management theorist

Wednesday, September 2: "Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often granted upon easier terms." Samuel Johnson, writer

Tuesday, September 1: "Most improved things can be improved." Mokokoma Mokhonoana, author

Monday, August 31: "Innovation is saying no to a thousand things." Steve Jobs

Week of August 24

Friday, August 28: “Today’s ‘best practices’ lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.” Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal

Thursday, August 27: "It's not what the Vision is, it's what the Vision does." Peter Senge, founder of the Society for Organizational Learning

Wednesday, August 26: "The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking." Albert Einstein

Tuesday, August 25: "Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change." W. Edwards Deming

Monday, August 24: "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." Elon Musk

Week of August 17

Friday, August 21: "One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out." Jeff Bezos

Thursday, August 20: "Different isn’t always better, but better is always different." Art Weinstein, author

Wednesday, August 19: "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be." Wayne Gretzky

Tuesday, August 18: "Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before." Shigeo Shingo

Monday, August 17: "I believe greatness is an evolutionary process that changes and evolves era to era." Michael Jordan

Week of August 10

Friday, August 14: "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

Thursday, August 13: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay, computer scientist

Wednesday, August 12: "All progress occurs because people dare to be different." Henry Miller

Tuesday, August 11: "You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over." Sir Richard Branson

Monday, August 10: "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." W. Edwards Deming

Week of August 3

Friday, August 7: "Copying your competitor won't help you beat your competitor. You need to think beyond your competitor." Gerhard Plenert and Bill Kirchmier, authors

Thursday, August 6: "The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage." Peter Senge, founder of the Society for Organizational Learning

Wednesday, August 5: "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." Steve Jobs

Tuesday, August 4: "If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and motivational speaker

Monday, August 3: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darwin

Week of July 27

Friday, July 31: "Run your business as if it’s in trouble because if you don’t, it will be some day." Jack Miles, author

Thursday, July 30: "Optimize process and improvement follows." Syed Sha, Facilities Management Specialist - Operations & QHSE at MAB

Wednesday, July 29: "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." Stephen Hawking

Tuesday, July 28: "The officer who doesn’t know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless." U.S. General George S. Patton

Monday, July 27: "Sometimes no problem is a sign of a different problem." Mark Rosenthal, author

Week of July 20

Friday, July 24: "Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity." Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club

Thursday, July 23: "Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other." Walter Elliot

Wednesday, July 22: "Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning." Sir Winston Churchill

Tuesday, July 21: "Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship." Benjamin Franklin

Monday, July 20: "When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves." Anthony J. D’Angelo, author

Week of July 13

Friday, July 17: "When you're in a hole, stop digging." Denis Healey, former Chancellor of the Exchequer

Thursday, July 16: "Planning is everything; the plan is nothing." Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wednesday, July 15: "What gets measured gets improved." Peter Drucker, educator and business management thinker

Tuesday, July 14: "There are many experts on how things have been done up to now. If you think something could use a little improvement, you are the expert." Robert Brault, author

Monday, July 13: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." Albert Einstein

Week of July 6

Friday, July 10: "A bad system will beat a good person every time." W. Edwards Deming

Thursday, July 9: "A goal without a plan is just a wish." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writer

Wednesday, July 8: "Commitment without understanding is a liability." Oliver Wight, pioneer of Integrated Business Planning

Tuesday, July 7: "Speed is everything. It is the indispensable ingredient to competitiveness." Jack Welch

Monday, July 6: "Action is the foundational key to all success." Pablo Picasso

Week of June 29

Friday, July 3: Independence Day observed (U.S. Holiday)

Thursday, July 2: "Plans are nothing, planning is everything." Philip Kotler, author

Wednesday, July 1: "Supply chain is like nature; it is all around us." Dave Waters

Tuesday, June 30: "There is no exercise better for the improvement of our world than reaching down on a daily basis to lift someone up." Melchor Lim

Monday, June 29: "The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything." Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., former CEO of IBM

Week of June 22

Friday, June 26: "If you want employees to feel appreciated, you need to celebrate their achievements regularly and publicly." Logan Green, co-founder and CEO of Lyft

Thursday, June 25: "Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability." Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox Corporation

Wednesday, June 24: "It’s about getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment, and helping to find a way to innovate." Marissa Mayer, former president and CEO of Yahoo!

Tuesday, June 23: "Our secret weapon for building the best culture is open and honest feedback." Gina Lau, HR executive at HelloSign

Monday, June 22: "It’s important for us to create a culture of innovation—one that both values and rewards risk." Barbara Landes, former CFO and SVP of PBS

Week of June 15

Friday, June 19: "There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither." Alan Cohen, author

Thursday, June 18: "Hire great people and give them freedom to be awesome." Andrew Mason, founder and former CEO of Groupon

Wednesday, June 17: "Being a great place to work is the difference between being a good company and a great company." Brian Kristofek, president and CEO of Upshot

Tuesday, June 16: "Shaping your culture is more than half done when you hire your team." Jessica Herrin, founder and CEO of Stella & Dot

Monday, June 15: "It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality." Harold Geneen, former president of ITT Corporation

Week of June 8

Friday, June 12: "Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing." Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot

Thursday, June 11: "Change before you have to." Jack Welch

Wednesday, June 10: "All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get." Arthur W. Jones, organizational design expert

Tuesday, June 9: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle

Monday, June 8: "Excellent firms don't believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change." Tom Peters, business management writer

Week of June 1

Friday, June 5: "If we magnified our successes as much as we magnified our disappointments, we’d all be much happier." Abraham Lincoln

Thursday, June 4: "Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first." Simon Sinek, author

Wednesday, June 3: "Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion." Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of ‎Airbnb

Tuesday, June 2: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." Henry Ford

Monday, June 1: "Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." Stephen R. Covey, author and educator

Week of May 25

Friday, May 29: "Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." Benjamin Franklin

Thursday, May 28: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." Maya Angelou

Wednesday, May 27: "Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others." Christian D. Larson, author

Tuesday, May 26: “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” John F. Kennedy

Monday, May 25: Memorial Day (U.S. Holiday)

Week of May 18

Friday, May 22: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Edison

Thursday, May 21: "If there is such a thing as good leadership, it is to give a good example." Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA

Wednesday, May 20: "Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there." Stevie Wonder

Tuesday, May 19: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs." Stephen R. Covey, author and educator 

Monday, May 18: "Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example." Brian Tracy, author and ‎motivational speaker

Week of May 11

Friday, May 15: "An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

Thursday, May 14: "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." Peter Drucker, educator and business management thinker

Wednesday, May 13: "In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive, and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding." Daniel Goleman, author

Tuesday, May 12: "There are good leaders who actively guide and bad leaders who actively misguide. Hence, leadership is about persuasion, presentation, and people skills." Shiv Khera, author and motivational speaker

Monday, May 11: "If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it." Bear Bryant, American football player and coach 

Week of May 4

Friday, May 8: "I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I sure can pick smart colleagues." Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thursday, May 7: "One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." Arthur Ashe

Wednesday, May 6: "It's a simple fact: no individual can be good at everything. Everyone needs people around them who have complementary sets of skills." Naveen Jain, founder and former CEO of InfoSpace

Tuesday, May 5: "The ABCs are attitude, behavior, and communication skills." Gerald Chertavian, founder and CEO of Year Up

Monday, May 4: "Intelligence, knowledge, or experience are important and might get you a job, but strong communication skills are what will get you promoted." Mireille Guiliano, author

Week of April 27

Friday, May 1: "I am unable to point to a single instance in which stunning results were gotten without the active and personal leadership of the upper managers." Joseph M. Juran

Thursday, April 30: "Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in." Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator

Wednesday, April 29: "It does not matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going." Brian Tracy, author and ‎motivational speaker

Tuesday, April 28: "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." Confucius

Monday, April 27: "We cannot become what we want to be by remaining where we are." Max DePree, businessman and writer

Week of April 20

Friday, April 24: "The best lesson I learned was to just do it." Sir Richard Branson

Thursday, April 23: "One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it." John C. Maxwell, author

Wednesday, April 22: "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." Henry Ford

Tuesday, April 21: "For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?" James Allen, writer

Monday, April 20: "You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures." Charles C. Noble, Major General and engineer

Week of April 13

Friday, April 17: "One person’s ceiling is another person’s floor." Denis Waitley, motivational speaker

Thursday, April 16: "Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good." Malcolm Gladwell

Wednesday, April 15: "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers, actor and columnist

Tuesday, April 14: "You must do the things you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

Monday, April 13: "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Michelangelo

Week of April 6

Friday, April 10: "Action may not always bring success, but there is no success without action." Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister

Thursday, April 9: "Nothing is impossible; the word itself says 'I’m possible.'" Audrey Hepburn

Wednesday, April 8: "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." Henry Ford

Tuesday, April 7: "Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision." Tony Robbins, author and ‎motivational speaker

Monday, April 6: "The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." Epictetus

Week of March 30

Friday, April 3: "Don’t follow the path. Blaze the trail." Jordan Belfort, author

Thursday, April 2: "It’s better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared." Whitney M. Young Jr., American civil rights leader

Wednesday, April 1: "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Arthur Ashe

Tuesday, March 31: "Teamwork makes the dream work." John C. Maxwell, author

Monday, March 30: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist

Week of March 23

Friday, March 27: "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." Michael Jordan

Thursday, March 26: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

Wednesday, March 25: "Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as a shared vision." Peter Senge, founder of the Society for Organizational Learning

Tuesday, March 24: "Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable." Kenyan Proverb

Monday, March 23: "In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly." Mark Sanborn, author

Week of March 16

Friday, March 20: "The nicest thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side." Margaret Carty, author

Thursday, March 19: "You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership." Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wednesday, March 18: "A leader can’t lead ‘til he knows where he’s going." John Locke

Tuesday, March 17: "None of us is as smart as all of us." Ken Blanchard, author

Monday, March 16: "Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, 'Make me feel important.' Never forget this message when working with people." Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

Week of March 9

Friday, March 13: "You can disagree without being disagreeable." U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Thursday, March 12: "Managers who master the hammer and expect all problems to behave like nails find organizational life confusing and frustrating." Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, authors

Wednesday, March 11: "Everyone on the team plays an equal role. My role is to create the wave and everyone on our team keeps the wave going." William Wang, founder and CEO of VIZIO

Tuesday, March 10: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." U.S. General George S. Patton

Monday, March 9: "Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team." Patrick Lencioni, author

Week of March 2

Friday, March 6: "Good is the enemy of great. That's why so few things become great." James C. Collins, author and consultant 

Thursday, March 5: "Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership." Peter Drucker, educator and business management thinker

Wednesday, March 4: "I believe the leader’s ultimate job is to spread hope." Bob Galvin, former CEO of Motorola

Tuesday, March 3: "Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." Ryūnosuke Satoro, writer

Monday, March 2: "You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question." Bill Gates

Week of February 24

Friday, February 28: "It is more than probable that the average man could, with no injury to his health, increase his efficiency fifty percent." Sir Walter Scott

Thursday, February 27: "Lean is about constant ticking, not occasional kicking." Alex Miller, management professor

Wednesday, February 26: "Waste is worse than loss." Thomas Edison

Tuesday, February 25: "Waste is a tax on the whole people." Albert W. Atwood, author

Monday, February 24: "Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage." Henry Ford

Week of February 17

Friday, February 21: "Willful waste brings woeful want." Thomas Fuller

Thursday, February 20: "Everything can be improved." Clarence W. Barron, publisher and former president of Dow Jones & Company

Wednesday, February 19: "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Sir Winston Churchill

Tuesday, February 18: "If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution." Steve Jobs

Monday, February 17: "There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club

Week of February 10

Friday, February 14: "Don’t water your weeds." Harvey Mackay, author and businessman

Thursday, February 13: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein

Wednesday, February 12: "It is vain to do more what can be done with less." William of Ockham, philosopher

Tuesday, February 11: "Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence." Vince Lombardi

Monday, February 10: "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." Vincent Van Gogh

Week of February 3

Friday, February 7: "Nature does constant value stream mapping—it’s called evolution." Carrie Latet, poet

Thursday, February 6: "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Peter Drucker, educator and business management thinker

Wednesday, February 5: "The most important thing about doing kaizen is to do kaizen when times are good, the economy is strong, and the company is profitable." Taiichi Ohno, founder of the Toyota Production System

Tuesday, February 4: "Chaos is the enemy of any organization the strives to be outstanding." Karen Martin, author

Monday, February 3: "The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we don't recognize." Shigeo Shingo

Week of January 27

Friday, January 31: "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself." Eleanor Roosevelt

Thursday, January 30: "Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wednesday, January 29: "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." Henry Ford

Tuesday, January 28: "Change begins at the top." John Hradesky, author

Monday, January 27: "Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts." Albert Einstein

Week of January 20

Friday, January 24: "Leadership is not rank, privileges, titles, or money; it is responsibility." Peter F. Drucker, educator and business management thinker

Thursday, January 23: "The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity; without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office." Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wednesday, January 22: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

Tuesday, January 21: "The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." Vince Lombardi

Monday, January 20: "The time is always right to do what is right." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Week of January 13

Friday, January 17: "Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss." F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thursday, January 16: "We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management." William Gibson, author

Wednesday, January 15: "Don’t let money run your life, let money help you run your life better." John Rampton, entrepreneur

Tuesday, January 14: "If you have people invested emotionally in the success of their team, that usually translates to strong attendance." Kelley O’Hara, FIFA World Cup champion

Monday, January 13: "People are the common denominator of progress. No improvement is possible with unimproved people." John Kenneth Galbraith, economist

Week of January 6

Friday, January 10: "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." Steve Jobs

Thursday, January 9: "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." Jim Rohn, motivational speaker

Wednesday, January 8: "That's what life is all about—timing." Lee Iacocca

Tuesday, January 7: "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates

Monday, January 6: "If you risk nothing, then you risk everything." Geena Davis, actress

Back to today's quote

Week of December 30

Friday, January 3: "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." Walt Disney

Thursday, January 2: "It’s not enough to do your best. You must first know what to do, and then do your best." W. Edwards Deming

Wednesday, January 1: ASQ closed for holiday

Tuesday, December 31: ASQ closed for holiday

Monday, December 30: ASQ closed for holiday

Week of December 23

Friday, December 27: ASQ closed for holiday

Thursday, December 26: ASQ closed for holiday

Wednesday, December 25: Christmas Day (US Holiday)

Tuesday, December 24: "If you hire good people, give them good jobs, and pay them good wages, generally something good is going to happen." James Sinegal, co-founder of Costco Wholesale Corporation

Monday, December 23: "Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that." Norman Vincent Peale, author

Week of December 16

Friday, December 20: "Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver." Ayn Rand, writer

Thursday, December 19: "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." Benjamin Franklin

Wednesday, December 18: "A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart." Jonathan Swift, author

Tuesday, December 17: "How do leaders serve their people? They pay good wages and treat employees with respect." John C. Maxwell, author

Monday, December 16: "I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages." Robert Bosch, founder of Bosch

Week of December 9

Friday, December 13: "Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible." Henry Ford

Thursday, December 12: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." John F. Kennedy

Wednesday, December 11: "Note to salary setters: Pay your people the least possible and you’ll get from them the same." Malcolm Forbes

Tuesday, December 10: "Salary negotiations shouldn't be limited to just salary. Salary pays your mortgage, but terms build your career." Christopher Voss, author

Monday, December 9: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair

Week of December 2

Friday, December 6: "If management thinks people don't care, it's likely that people won't care." F. James McDonald, former president and COO of General Motors

Thursday, December 5: "The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves." Ray Kroc, business magnate

Wednesday, December 4: "While building up others, you will build up yourself." James E. Casey, American Messenger Company founder

Tuesday, December 3: "Success is not a function of the size of your title but of the richness of your contribution." Robin S. Sharma, author and leadership expert

Monday, December 2: "It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages." Henry Ford

Week of November 25

Friday, November 29: ASQ closed for holiday

Thursday, November 28: Thanksgiving Day (US Holiday)

Wednesday, November 27: "You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take." Wayne Gretzky

Tuesday, November 26: "Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash." U.S. General George S. Patton

Monday, November 25: "Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome." Samuel Johnson, writer

Week of November 18

Friday, November 22: "Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast." Tom Peters, business management writer

Thursday, November 21: "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." David Lloyd George, former British Prime Minister

Wednesday, November 20: "Playing it safe is the riskiest choice we can ever make." Sarah Ban Breathnach, author and public speaker

Tuesday, November 19: "A good rule of thumb is to assume that 'everything matters.'" Richard Thaler, economist

Monday, November 18: "Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy." Lao Tzu

Week of November 11

Friday, November 15: "Plans based on average assumptions are wrong on average." Sam L. Savage, author and professor

Thursday, November 14: "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." Albert Einstein

Wednesday, November 13: "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." Will Rogers, actor and humorist

Tuesday, November 12: "Opportunity and risk come in pairs." Bangambiki Habyarimana, author

Monday, November 11: "Do as little as needed, not as much as possible." Henk Kraaijenhof, renowned sprint coach

Week of November 4

Friday, November 8: "Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is." Jimmy Carter, 39th U.S. President

Thursday, November 7: "Sense and deal with problems in their smallest state, before they grow bigger and become fatal." Pearl Zhu, author

Wednesday, November 6: "If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake." Frank Wilczek, Nobel laureate

Tuesday, November 5: "To be alive at all involves some risk." Harold Macmillan, former British Prime Minister

Monday, November 4: "Being able to be repeated controllably is one key element in risk management." Toba Beta, author

Week of October 28

Friday, November 1: "Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius." An Wang, co-founder of Wang Laboratories 

Thursday, October 31: "Your success in life isn't based on your ability to simply change. It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers, and business." Mark Sanborn, motivational speaker

Wednesday, October 30: “Change before you have to.” Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

Tuesday, October 29: “When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” Tuli Kupferberg, poet and singer

Monday, October 28: “I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” Georg C. Lichtenberg, physicist 

Week of October 21

Friday, October 25: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy

Thursday, October 24: "By changing nothing, nothing changes.” Tony Robbins, author and ‎motivational speaker

Wednesday, October 23: “The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.” Brian Chesky, ‎ co-founder and CEO of ‎Airbnb

Tuesday, October 22: "Innovation comes from the producer, not the customer.” W. Edwards Deming

Monday, October 21: “Adaptability and constant innovation are key to the survival of any company operating in a competitive market.” Shiv Nadar, billionaire industrialist 

Week of October 14

Friday, October 18: “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohn, motivational speaker 

Thursday, October 17: “Collaboration and augmentation are the foundational principles of innovation.” Vaclav Smil, scientist and author

Wednesday, October 16: “Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.” Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner

Tuesday, October 15: “Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.” Tom Freston, former CEO of Viacom Inc

Monday, October 14: “Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” Charles Eames, industrial designer
 

Week of October 7

Friday, October 11: “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” Henry Ford

Thursday, October 10: "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” James Cameron, filmmaker 

Wednesday, October 9: "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” Steve Jobs

Tuesday, October 8: “Quality is not an act; it is a habit.” Aristotle 

Monday, October 7: “The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.” Irving Berlin, composer 
 

Week of September 30

Friday, October 4: “The success of a production depends on the attention paid to detail.” David O. Selznick, film producer 

Thursday, October 3: “The culture of a workplace—an organization’s values, norms and practices—has a huge impact on our happiness and success.” Adam Grant, author and psychologist

Wednesday, October 2: “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” Henry Ford

Tuesday, October 1: “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” William G. Pollard, nuclear physicist and scholar

Monday, September 30: "Growth and comfort do not coexist.” Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM

Week of September 23

Friday, September 27: "It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.” Sara Blakely, Spanx Inc. Founder  

Thursday, September 26: "We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.” Arianna Huffington

Wednesday, September 25: "So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” Caterina Fake, Flickr Co-founder

Tuesday, September 24: "My definition of ‘innovative’ is providing value to the customer.” Mary T. Barra, CEO of General Motors

Monday, September 23: "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Week of September 16

Friday, September 20: "Diversity is critical to innovation." Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture

Thursday, September 19: "Innovation is the calling card of the future." Anna Eshoo, U.S. Congresswoman

Wednesday, September 18: "Do what you love and success will follow. Passion is the fuel behind a successful career." Meg Whitman, former CEO and President of HP

Tuesday, September 17: "If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one." Dolly Parton, singer-songwriter

Monday, September 16: "You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive." Sheryl Sandberg

Week of September 9

Friday, September 13: "Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success." Martha Stewart

Thursday, September 12: "Fortune befriends the bold." Emily Dickinson

Wednesday, September 11: "Always remember that striving and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary." Sarah Ban Breathnach, author

Tuesday, September 10: "There is simply no substitute for hard work when it comes to achieving success." Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan

Monday, September 9: "Success isn’t about the end result, it’s about what you learn along the way." Vera Wang

Week of September 2

Friday, September 6: "Your value will be not what you know; it will be what you share." Ginni Rometty, chair, president, and CEO of IBM

Thursday, September 5: "Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist." Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay Cosmetics founder

Wednesday, September 4: "Do one thing every day that scares you." Mary Schmich, journalist

Tuesday, September 3: "Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it." Julia Child

Monday, September 2: Labor Day (US Holiday)

Week of August 26

Friday, August 30: "I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying." Jeff Bezos

Thursday, August 29: "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today." Franklin D. Roosevelt

Wednesday, August 28: "If plan A fails, remember there are 25 more letters." Chris Guillebeau, nonfiction author

Tuesday, August 27: "What is the purpose of being human and alive without doing new things?" Sir John Sulston

Monday, August 26: "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." John D. Rockefeller

Week of August 19

Friday, August 23: "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" Vincent van Gogh

Thursday, August 22: "The hallmark of successful people is that they are always stretching themselves to learn new things." Dr. Carol S. Dweck, motivation psychologist

Wednesday, August 21: "You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to." C.S. Lewis

Tuesday, August 20: "Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning." Robert Kiyosaki

Monday, August 19: "We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." Walt Disney

Week of August 12

Friday, August 16: "Believe you can and you’re halfway there." Theodore Roosevelt

Thursday, August 15: "Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once." Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox

Wednesday, August 14: "If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it." Jonathan Winters

Tuesday, August 13: "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." Dale Carnegie

Monday, August 12: "I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work." Thomas Edison

Week of August 5

Friday, August 9: "Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first." Frederick B. Wilcox

Thursday, August 8: "Creativity is, after all, lauded as the engine of business innovation." Matthew Walker, author and scientist

Wednesday, August 7: "The history of innovation is the story of ideas that seemed dumb at the time." Andy Dunn, CEO of Bonobos

Tuesday, August 6: "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." Steve Jobs

Monday, August 5: "Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well." Jim Rohn, motivational speaker

Week of July 29

Friday, August 2: "If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out." Mark Zuckerberg

Thursday, August 1: "Failure is success if we learn from it." Malcolm Forbes

Wednesday, July 31: "Networking has been cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. Who you know really impacts what you know." Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest

Tuesday, July 30: "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." Alexander Graham Bell

Monday, July 29: "One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." Arthur Ashe, American tennis player

Week of July 22

Friday, July 26: "Success is where preparation and opportunity meet." Bobby Unser, former American automobile racer

Thursday, July 25: "Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure." Confucius

Wednesday, July 24: "Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success." Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter

Tuesday, July 23: "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric

Monday, July 22: "Failures—repeated failures—are fingerposts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success." C. S. Lewis

Week of July 15

Friday, July 19: "Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another." Napoleon Hill, American self-help author

Thursday, July 18: "The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty." Zig Ziglar, American author and speaker

Wednesday, July 17: "Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success." Shiv Khera, Indian author and motivational speaker

Tuesday, July 16: "If you can push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking a risk, really amazing things can happen." Marissa Mayer, former president and CEO of Yahoo!

Monday, July 15: "Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen." Wayne Huizenga

Week of July 8

Friday, July 12: "I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." Thomas Edison

Thursday, July 11: "For success, attitude is equally as important as ability." Sir Walter Scott

Wednesday, July 10: "The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it." Dr. Kalpana Chawla, NASA Aerospace Engineer

Tuesday, July 9: "Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself—do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it." Bruce Lee

Monday, July 8: "Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." Benjamin Franklin

Week of July 1

Friday, July 5: "99% of failures come from people who make excuses." George Washington

Thursday, July 4: Independence Day (US Holiday)

Wednesday, July 3: "In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits." Lee Iacocca

Tuesday, July 2: "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." Colin Powell

Monday, July 1: "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." Henry Ford

Week of June 24

Friday, June 28: "Failure is the seed of success." Kaoru Ishikawa

Thursday, June 27: "Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life.” Dr. Mae Jemison, engineer, physician, and NASA astronaut

Wednesday, June 26: "That's what life is all about—timing." Lee Iacocca

Tuesday, June 25: "The wisest of the wise may err." Aeschylus

Monday, June 24: "It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example." Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer

Week of June 17

Friday, June 21: "Your mind is a powerful thing. When you fill it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change." Unknown

Thursday, June 20: "We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained." Marie Curie

Wednesday, June 19: "'Restore connection' is not just for devices, it is for people too. If we cannot disconnect, we cannot lead." Arianna Huffington

Tuesday, June 18: "Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears." Les Brown, motivational speaker and author

Monday, June 17: "Be first and be lonely." Ginni Rometty, chair, president, and CEO of IBM

Week of June 10

Friday, June 14: "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." Walt Disney

Thursday, June 13: "It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up." Vince Lombardi

Wednesday, June 12: "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank

Tuesday, June 11: "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates

Monday, June 10: "There is no substitute for knowledge." W. Edwards Deming

Week of June 3

Friday, June 7: "Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear." George Addair

Thursday, June 6: "Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay." Simone de Beauvoir, writer and social theorist

Wednesday, June 5: "Buckle up, and know that it’s going to be a tremendous amount of work, but embrace it." Tory Burch

Tuesday, June 4: "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." Confucius

Monday, June 3: "Champions keep playing until they get it right." Billie Jean King

Week of May 27

Friday, May 31: "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful." Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Prize laureate

Thursday, May 30: "Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes." Margaret Wheatley, writer

Wednesday, May 29: "I decided I can't pay a person to rewind time, so I may as well get over it." Serena Williams

Tuesday, May 28: "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear." Rosa Parks

Monday, May 27: Memorial Day (US Holiday)

Week of May 20

Friday, May 24: "Run to the fire; don’t hide from it." Meg Whitman, former CEO and President, HP

Thursday, May 23: "Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen." Brené Brown

Wednesday, May 22: "Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper." Julia Child

Tuesday, May 21: "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them." Ida B. Wells

Monday, May 20: "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations can never effect a reform." Susan B. Anthony

Week of May 13

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

Thursday, May 16: "Everyone shines, given the right lighting." Susan Cain

Wednesday, May 15: "Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on." Hillary Clinton

Tuesday, May 14: "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement." Helen Keller

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

Week of May 6

Friday, May 10: "Small improvements are believable and therefore achievable." Anthony Robbins

Thursday, May 9: "Nature does not make jumps." Carl Linnaeus

Wednesday, May 8: "The job of management is not supervision, but leadership." W. Edwards Deming

Tuesday, May 7: "Quality leaders do not work longer hours. They do different things during the hours that they do work." Juran Institute, Inc.

Monday, May 6: "Man will err while yet he strives." Goethe

 

Week of April 29

Friday, May 3: "You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose." Indira Gandhi, first female prime minister of India 

Thursday, May 2: "People do not just buy things, they also buy expectations." Albrecht and Zemke

Wednesday, May 1: "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." John F. Kennedy

Tuesday, April 30: "The voice of the customer guides world-class leaders' every action and decision." Chang, Labovitz, and Rosansky

Monday, April 29: "Good companies tell you how they collect employee suggestions. Great companies tell you how they use them." Harvard Business Review

Week of April 22

Friday, April 26: “I wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.” Indra Nooyi, CEO, PepsiCo

Thursday, April 25: "You cannot manipulate people into doing quality work." Townsend and Gebhardt

Wednesday, April 24: ""Great works are performed not by strength, but my perseverance." Samuel Johnson

Tuesday, April 23: "Patience is the companion of wisdom." St. Augustine

Monday, April 22: "There are no gains without pains." Adlai Stevenson

Week of April 15

Friday, April 19: "Wisely and slowly; they stumble that run fast." William Shakespeare

Thursday, April 18: "The man who does not get a certain satisfaction out of his day's work is losing the best part of his pay." Ford and Crowther

Wednesday, April 17: "Satisfied employees create satisfied customers." Capezio and Morehouse

Tuesday, April 16: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan

Monday, April 15: "Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial-and-error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes." Buckminster Fuller

Week of April 8

Friday, April 12: "Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial-and-error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes." Buckminster Fuller

Thursday, April 11: "By asking for the impossible we obtain the best possible." Italian Proverb

Wednesday, April 10: "The first problem for all of us…is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up." Gloria Steinem

Tuesday, April 9: "Theory is a window into the world." W. Edwards Deming

Monday, April 8: "Quality is the target. Education gives people the tools with which to take aim." Ernst & Young

Week of April 1

Friday, April 5: "I did not have the most experience in the industry or the most money, but I cared the most." Sara Blakely, CEO

Thursday, April 4: "Success is never owned, it is rented, and the rent is due every day." Rory Vaden

Wednesday, April 3: "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default" J. K. Rowling, British novelist

Tuesday, April 2: "Problems are only opportunities in work clothes." Henry J. Kaiser

Monday, April 1: "Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking and using our potential." Liane Cordes

Week of March 25

Friday, March 29: “Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” Gloria Steinem

Thursday, March 28: "You've got to be willing to fail." James Burke, Johnson & Johnson

Wednesday, March 27: "If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than to get permission." Grace Hopper, US Naval Admiral

Tuesday, March 26: "The future struggles against being mastered." Latin Proverb

Monday, March 25: “Change is inevitable to a progressive society. Change is constant." Benjamin Disraeli

Week of March 18

Friday, March 22: “What separates finishers from quitters in any aspect of life is that finishers know how to silence the mind when it kicks up those demons of doubt.” John Joseph, Musician, Author, and Ironman Triathlete

Thursday, March 21: "One good head is better than a hundred strong hands." Thomas Fuller

Wednesday, March 20: "Marvels are many, but man is the greatest." Sophocles

Tuesday, March 19: "Those who see teams as a replacement for hierarchy are missing the true potential of teams." Katzenbach and Smith

Monday, March 18: "No matter how senior you get in an organization, no matter how well you’re perceived to be doing, your job is never done." Abigail Johnson, President and CEO, Fidelity Investments

Week of March 11

Friday, March 15: "The way you tell your story to yourself matters." Amy Cuddy, Harvard Business School Researcher and Author

Thursday, March 14: “Each moment has the potential to be special and memorable.” Steven Redhead

Wednesday, March 13: "If you have an idea, you have to believe in yourself or no one else will." Sarah Michelle Gellar

Tuesday, March 12: “Luck is the residue of design.” Branch Rickey

Monday, March 11: "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse." Florence Nightingale

Week of March 4

Friday, March 8: "The mere fact of being able to call your job your passion is success in my eyes." Alicia Vikander

Thursday, March 7: “Take the chair and sit at the forefront of your dreams. You are the chairperson at the center of affairs. Make it memorable; make an impact! Leave a legacy!” Israelmore Ayivor

Wednesday, March 6: “One cannot make a memorable catch without reaching out to catch the ball.” Jeffrey G. Duarte

Tuesday, March 5: “What makes your brand stick and tick is your ability to make it memorable” Bernard Kelvin Clive

Monday, March 4: "Differences can be a strength rather than a handicap." Condoleezza Rice

Week of February 25

Friday, March 1: “In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact.” Les Brown

Thursday, February 28: "Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking and using our potential." Liane Cordes

Wednesday, February 27: “The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

Tuesday, February 26: "Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward." Hillary Clinton

Monday, February 25: “You have to be willing to act. You have to be willing to crash and burn, to fail, or you won’t get very far.” Steve Jobs

Week of February 18

Friday, February 22: "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear. Knowing what must be done does away with fear." Rosa Parks

Thursday, February 21: "It is not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves." Edmund Hillary

Wednesday, February 20: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” Jimmy Dean

Tuesday, February 19: "If you get, give. If you learn, teach." Maya Angelou

Monday, February 18: “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” Bill Gates

Week of February 11

Friday, February 15: "A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning." Billie Jean King

Thursday, February 14: “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Wednesday, February 13: "I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." Louisa May Alcott

Tuesday, February 12: "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." Babe Ruth

Monday, February 11: “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” Elon Musk

Week of February 4

Friday, February 8: "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected." Steve Jobs

Thursday, February 7: "Quality is free. It's not a gift, but it's free. The unquality things are what cost money." Philip Crosby

Wednesday, February 6: "The guiding principle should be make no small plans!" Joseph Juran

Tuesday, February 5: "The first concern of the company is the happiness of the people connected with it. If the people do not feel happy…that company does not deserve to exist." Kaoru Ishikawa

Monday, February 4: "The first step is to learn how to change." W. Edward Deming

Week of January 28

Friday, February 1: "Train minds as tools that can be used for a lifetime, inquiring minds, curious minds, seeking, constantly refueling their ideas and information." Eleanor Roosevelt

Thursday, January 31: ""Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision without action can change the world!" Joel Barker

Wednesday, January 30: "As is the case in everything we do, unknown or chance causes extert their influence." Walter A. Shewhart

Tuesday, January 29: "The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monday, January 28: "Make voyages! Attempt them! There is nothing else." Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

Week of January 21

Friday, January 25: "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." Jonathan Swift

Thursday, January 24: "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wednesday, January 23: "Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way." Booker T. Washington

Tuesday, January 22: "The end result of a service is a feeling." Karl Albrecht

Monday, January 21: "There are no shortcuts for any place worth going." Beverly Sills

Week of January 14

Friday, January 18: "A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation." Fanny Burney

Thursday, January 17: "Those who begin many things finish but a few." Proverb

Wednesday, January 16: "Curiosity is one of those insatiable passions that grow by gratification." Sarah Scott

Tuesday, January 15: "The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice." George Eliot

Monday, January 14: "No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond state of the art." Henry Petroski, civil engineer

Week of January 7

Friday, January 11: "Self-trust, we know, is the first secret of success." Lady Wilde

Thursday, January 10: “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” Squire Bill Widener

Wednesday, January 9: "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tuesday, January 8: "There is only one proof of ability: action." Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Monday, January 7: "Slow and steady wins the race." Aesop

Week of January 2

Friday, January 4: "Few things are impossible to diligence and skill…Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." Samuel Johnson

Thursday, January 3: "Well begun is half done." Aristotle

Wednesday, January 2: "Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it." Madeleine L'Engle

Back to today's quote

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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