🖌️James Surowiecki - Collected Quotes

"Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise." (James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds", 2005)

"Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise." (James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds", 2005)

"Errors in individual judgment won’t wreck the group’s collective judgment as long as those errors aren’t systematically pointing in the same direction. One of the quickest ways to make people’s judgments systematically biased is to make them dependent on each other for information." (James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds", 2005)

"The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert's. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you're better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are." (James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds", 2005)

"The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other." (James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds", 2005)

"[...] under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them. Groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart. Even if most of the people within a group are not especially well-informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision." (James Surowiecki, "The Wisdom of Crowds", 2005)

🖌️Nir Eyal - Collected Quotes

"Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occuring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do it." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"Like flossing, frequent engagement with a product, especially over a short period of time, increases the likelihood of forming new routines." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"Reducing the thinking required to take the next action increases the likelihood of the desired behavior occurring unconsciously." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"To change behavior, products must ensure the user feels in control. People must want to use the service, not feel they have to." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014) 

"User habits are a competitive advantage. Products that change customer routines are less susceptible to attacks from other companies." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"Users who continually find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about it." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014) 

"When designers intentionally trick users into inviting friends or blasting a message to their social networks, they may see some initial growth, but it comes at the expense of users' goodwill and trust. When people discover they've been duped, they vent their frustration and stop using the product." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

"You'll often find that people's declared preferences - what they say they want - are far different from their revealed preferences - what they actually do." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)

🖌️Philip Kotler - Collected Quotes

"Good mission statements focus on a limited number of goals, stress the company's major policies and values, and define the company's major competitive scopes." (Philip Kotler, "Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control", 1967)

"Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value. It is the art of helping your customers become better of." (Philip Kotler, "Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control", 1967)

"Marketing management is the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs designed to create, build, and maintain beneficial exchanges with target buyers for the purpose of achieving organizational objectives." (Philip Kotler, "Strategic Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control", 1993)

"Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something. They should worry more about the cost of not doing it." (Philip Kotler, "Marketing Insights from A to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know", 2003)

"A clear, thoughtful mission statement, developed collaboratively with and shared with managers, employees, and often customers, provides a shared sense of purpose, direction, and opportunity." (Philip Kotler & Kevin L Keller, "Marketing Management" 15th Ed., 2016)

"Culture is the fundamental determinant of a person’s wants and behavior." (Philip Kotler & Kevin L Keller, "Marketing Management" 15th Ed., 2016)

"Goals indicate what a business unit wants to achieve; strategy is a game plan for getting there. Every business must design a strategy for achieving its goals, consisting of a marketing strategy and a compatible technology strategy and sourcing strategy." (Philip Kotler & Kevin L Keller, "Marketing Management" 15th Ed., 2016)

"Good mission statements have five major characteristics. (1) They focus on a limited number of goals. (2) They stress the company’s major policies and values. (3) They define the major competitive spheres within which the company will operate. (4) They take a long-term view. (5) They are as short, memorable, and meaningful as possible." (Philip Kotler & Kevin L Keller, "Marketing Management" 15th Ed., 2016)

"Strategic planning happens within the context of the organization. A company’s organization consists of its structures, policies, and corporate culture, all of which can become dysfunctional in a rapidly changing business environment. Whereas managers can change structures and policies (though with difficulty), the company’s culture is very hard to change. Yet adapting the culture is often the key to successfully implementing a new strategy." (Philip Kotler & Kevin L Keller, "Marketing Management" 15th Ed., 2016)

"To ensure they execute the right activities, marketers must prioritize strategic planning in three key areas: (1) managing the businesses as an investment portfolio, (2) assessing the market’s growth rate and the company’s position in that market, and (3) establishing a strategy. The company must develop a game plan for achieving each business’s long-run objectives." (Philip Kotler & Kevin L Keller, "Marketing Management" 15th Ed., 2016)

🖌️Robert S Kaplan - Collected Quotes

"A strategy is a set of hypotheses about cause and effect. The measurement system should make the relationships (hypotheses) among objectives (and measures) in the various perspectives explicit so that they can be managed and validated. The chain of cause and effect should pervade all four perspectives of a Balanced Scorecard." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"An organization's measurement system strongly affects the behavior of people both inside and outside the organization." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Mission statements should be inspirational. They should supply energy and motivation to the organization. But inspirational mission statements and slogans are not sufficient." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Organizational learning and growth come from three principal sources: people, systems, and organizational procedures."  (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Organizations need the capacity for double-loop learning. Double-loop learning occurs when managers question their underlying assumptions and reflect on whether the theory under which they were operating remains consistent with current evidence, observations, and experience. Of course, managers need feedback about whether their planned strategy is being executed according to plan-the single-loop learning process. But even more important, they need feedback about whether the planned strategy remains a viable and successful strategy-the double-loop learning process. Managers need information so that they can question whether the fundamental assumptions made when they launched the strategy are valid." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"The Balanced Scorecard has its greatest impact when it is deployed to drive organizational change. [...] The Balanced Scorecard is primarily a mechanism for strategy implementation, not for strategy formulation. It can accommodate either approach for formulating business unit strategy-starting from the customer perspective, or starting from excellent internal-business-process capabilities. For whatever approach that SBU senior executives use to formulate their strategy, the Balanced Scorecard will provide an invaluable mechanism for translating that strategy into specific objectives, measures, and targets, and monitoring the implementation of that strategy during subsequent periods." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"The Balanced Scorecard translates mission and strategy into objectives and measures, organized into four different perspectives: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. The scorecard provides a framework, a language, to communicate mission and strategy; it uses measurement to inform employees about the drivers of current and future success." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Organizations need tools for communicating both their strategy and the processes and systems that will help them implement that strategy. Strategy maps provide such a tool." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It", Harvard Business Review, 2000)

"Strategy maps put into focus the often-blurry line of sight between your corporate strategy and what your employees do every day -  significantly enhancing collaboration and coordination." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It", Harvard Business Review, 2000)

"Strategy maps show the cause-and effect links by which specific improvements create desired outcomes [...] From a larger perspective, strategy maps show how an organization will convert its initiatives and resources - including intangible assets such as corporate culture and employee knowledge - into tangible outcomes." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It", Harvard Business Review, 2000)

"The balanced scorecard measures your company’s performance from four perspectives - financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. A strategy map is a visual framework for the corporate objectives within those four areas." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It", Harvard Business Review, 2000)

"Effective leadership begins with having the right mindset; in particular, it begins with having an ownership mind-set. This means a willingness to put oneself in the shoes of a decision maker and think through all of the considerations that the decision maker must factor into his or her thinking and actions." (Robert S Kaplan, "What You're Really Meant To Do", 2013)

"There's no single right way to accomplish your goals. Each of us has a number of avenues to reach our potential. The world constantly changes. Life often unfolds as a series of phases. Our potential is likely to evolve as the world evolves and as we continue to learn, grow, and develop our capabilities." (Robert S Kaplan, "What You're Really Meant To Do", 2013)

🖌️James L Hayes - Collected Quotes

"Effective managers live in the present but concentrate on the future." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"Endless meetings, sloppy communications, and red tape steal the entrepreneur's time." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"Good management and entrepreneurship are not synonymous." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"If managers are careless about basic things telling the truth, respecting moral codes, proper professional conduct who can believe them on other issues?" (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"Many people equate good management with perfection. This is a fallacy. If perfection could be achieved, there would be no need for management." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"We try to make management decisions that, if everything goes right, will preclude future problems. But everything does not always go right, and managers therefore must be problem solvers as well as decision makers." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

🖌️Bruce Henderson - Collected Quotes

"All organizations do change when put under sufficient pressure. This pressure must be either external to the organization or the result of very strong leadership." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"Any approach to strategy quickly encounters a conflict between corporate objectives and corporate capabilities. Attempting the impossible is not good strategy; it is just a waste of resources." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"Concentrate your strength against your competitor's relative weakness." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"Executive stress is difficult to overstate when there is a conflict among policy restrictions, near-term performance, long-term good of the company, and personal survival." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"It is a paradox that the greater the decentralization, the greater the need for both leadership and explicit policies from the top management." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"It is rare for any organization to generate sufficient pressure internally to produce significant change in direction. Indeed, internal pressure is likely to be regarded as a form of dissatisfaction with the organization's leadership." (Bruce Henderson, 'Henderson on Corporate Strategy', 1979)

"Overly optimistic goals nearly always result in one of two extremes. If the goal is seen as a must, then the division manager must ''go for broke." This can result in reckless risk taking. More commonly [...] ultraconservative action. The reasoning is: "Why take any chances to achieve an unattainable goal." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"Power is the ability to initiate activity for others and to disregard others' initiative. Power can be used to strengthen power [...]. he first use of power is to preserve and compound it." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"The corporation without an explicit strategy will fall into the hands of politicians." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"The executive must choose between using his power to strengthen the organization and using his power to strengthen his personal power base." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

🖌️Herbert A Simon - Collected Quotes

"All behavior involves conscious or unconscious selection of particular actions out of all those which are physically possible to the actor and to those persons over whom he exercises influence and authority." (Herbert A Simon, "Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization", 1947)

"Decision making processes are aimed at finding courses of action that are feasible or satisfactory in the light of multiple goals and constraints." (Herbert A Simon, "Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization", 1947)

"Many individuals and organization units contribute to every large decision, and the very problem of centralization and decentralization is a problem of arranging the complex system into an effective scheme." (Herbert A Simon, "Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization", 1947)

"The function of knowledge in the decision-making process is to determine which consequences follow upon which of the alternative strategies. It is the task of knowledge to select from the whole class of possible consequences a more limited subclass, or even (ideally) a single set of consequences correlated with each strategy." (Herbert A Simon, "Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization", 1947)

"As the decision-making function becomes more highly automated, corporate decision making will perhaps provide fewer outlets for creative drives than it now does." (Herbert A Simon, "Management and Corporations 1985", 1960)

"The mathematical and computing techniques for making programmed decisions replace man but they do not generally simulate him." (Herbert A Simon, "Management and Corporations 1985", 1960)

"Programs do not merely substitute brute force for human cunning. Increasingly, they imitate-and in some cases improve upon-human cunning." (Herbert A Simon, "Management and Corporations 1985", 1960)

"Roughly, by a complex system I mean one made up of a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way. In such systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, not in an ultimate, metaphysical sense, but in the important pragmatic sense that, given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole." (Herbert A Simon, "The Architecture of Complexity", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 106 (6), 1962)

"Design problems - generating or discovering alternatives - are complex largely because they involve two spaces, an action space and a state space, that generally have completely different structures. To find a design requires mapping the former of these on the latter. For many, if not most, design problems in the real world systematic algorithms are not known that guarantee solutions with reasonable amounts of computing effort. Design uses a wide range of heuristic devices - like means-end analysis, satisficing, and the other procedures that have been outlined - that have been found by experience to enhance the efficiency of search. Much remains to be learned about the nature and effectiveness of these devices." (Herbert A Simon, "The Logic of Heuristic Decision Making", [in "The Logic of Decision and Action"], 1966)

"It is easy to construct conceptual abstractions - like those in the literature of economics and statistical decision theory - that describe decision making as a process of choosing among possible states of the world. Whatever their value for conceptualizing certain aspects of the theory of choice, these abstractions cannot be taken as descriptions of actual decision-making systems, since they ignore a central fact of the decision-making process: that it must be carried out by an information processing system whose computational powers are puny in comparison with the complexity of the environment with which they must cope. Factorization of that complexity by the device of selective attention is an indispensable adaptive mechanism." (Herbert A Simon, "The Logic of Heuristic Decision Making", [in "The Logic of Decision and Action"], 1966)

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." (Herbert A Simon, "Computers, Communications and the Public Interest", 1971)

🖌️Harold Geneen - Collected Quotes

"Every company has two organizational structures: the formal one is written on the charts; the other is the living relationship of the men and women in the organization." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"Every time a chief executive takes an action for or against someone [...] there is a reaction throughout the company." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"Leadership is the very heart and soul of business management." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"Ninety-nine percent of all surprises in business are negative." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"Public accounting taught me analytical approaches to business problems, objective reasoning, and the highest order of discipline in making factual presentations." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"The drudgery of the numbers will make you free." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"The highest art of professional management requires the literal ability to 'smell' a 'real fact' from all others." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"The man who delegates responsibilities for running the company, without knowing the intimate details of what is involved, runs the enormous risk of rendering himself superfluous." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"The professional's grasp of the numbers is a measure of the control he has over the events that the figures represent." (Harold Geneen, Managing, 1984)

"When you have mastered the numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading a book. You will be reading meanings." (Harold Geneen & Alvin Moscow, "Managing", 1984)

🖌️Michael E Porter - Collected Quotes

"The essence of formulating strategy is relating a company to its environment." (Michael E Porter, "Competitive Strategy", 1980)

"Risk is a function of how poorly a strategy will perform if the 'wrong' scenario occurs." (Michael EPorter, "Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance", 1985)

"But the essence of strategy is in the activities – choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals. Otherwise, a strategy is nothing more than a marketing slogan that will not withstand competition." (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Commonly, the threats to strategy are seen to emanate from outside a company because of changes in technology or the behavior of competitors. Although external changes can be the problem, the greater threat to strategy often comes from within. A sound strategy is undermined by a misguided view of competition, by organizational failures, and, especially, by the desire to grow." (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Managers must clearly distinguish operational effectiveness from strategy. Both are essential, but the two agendas are different. The operational agenda involves continual improvement everywhere there are no trade-offs. Failure to do this creates vulnerability even for companies with a good strategy. The operational agenda is the proper place for constant change, flexibility, and relentless efforts to achieve best practice. In contrast, the strategic agenda is the right place for defining a unique position, making clear trade-offs, and tightening fit. It involves the continual search for ways to reinforce and extend the company’s position. The strategic agenda demands discipline and continuity; its enemies are distraction and compromise." (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Strategy is creating fit among a company’s activities. The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well - not just a few - and integrating among them. If there is no fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability. Management reverts to the simpler task of overseeing independent functions, and operational effectiveness determines an organization’s relative performance."  (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Strategy renders choices about what not to do as important as choices about what to do. Indeed, setting limits is another function of leadership. Deciding which target group of customers, varieties, and needs the company should serve is fundamental to developing a strategy. But so is deciding not to serve other customers or needs and not to offer certain features or services. Thus strategy requires constant discipline and clear communication. Indeed, one of the most important functions of an explicit, communicated strategy is to guide employees in making choices that arise because of trade-offs in their individual activities and in day-to-day decisions." (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"There's a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different. Operational effectiveness is about things that you really shouldn't have to make choices on; it's about what's good for everybody and about what every business should be doing."  (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

🖌️Taiichi Ohno - Collected Quotes

"Autonomation [automation with a human touch] changes the meaning of management as well. An operator is not needed while the machine is working normally. Only when the machine stops because of an abnormal situation does it get human attention. As a result, one worker can attend several machines, making it possible to reduce the number of operators and increase production efficiency. [...] Implementing autonomation is up to the managers and supervisors of each production area. The key is to give human intelligence to the machine and, at the same time, to adapt the simple movement of the human operator to the autonomous machines." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"Autonomation [..] performs a dual role. It eliminates overproduction, an important waste in manufacturing, and prevents the production of defective products. To accomplish this, standard work procedures, corresponding to each player's ability, must be adhered to at all times." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"'Efficiency', in modern industry and business in general, means cost reduction." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"Establishing (1) a production flow and (2) a way to maintain a constant supply of raw materials from outside for parts to be machined was the way the Toyota, or Japanese, production system should be operated." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"I feel the most important point in common between sports and work is the continuing need for practice and training. It is easy to understand theory with the mind; the problem is to remember it with the body. The goal is to know and do instinctively. Having the spirit to endure the training is the first step on the road to winning." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"In a production plant operation, data are highly regarded - but I consider facts to be even more important. When a problem arises, if our search for the cause is not thorough, the actions taken can be out of focus. This is why we repeatedly ask why. This is the scientific basis of the Toyota system." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"Just-in-time means that, in a flow process, the right parts needed in assembly reach the assembly line at the time they are needed and only in the amount needed. A company establishing this flow throughout can approach zero inventory." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"Needs and opportunities are always there. We just have to drive ourselves to find the practical ones." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"The first rule of kanban is that the later process goes to the earlier process to pick up products. This rule was derived from need and from looking at things upside-down, or from the opposite standpoint." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"We have eliminated waste by examining available resources, rearranging machines, improving machining processes, installing autonomous systems, improving tools, analyzing transportation methods, and optimizing the amount of materials at hand for machining. High production efficiency has also been maintained by preventing the recurrence of defective products, operational mistakes, and accidents, and by incorporating workers' ideas. All of this is possible because of the inconspicuous standard work sheet." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"When the problem is clearly understood, improvement is possible." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"When thinking about the absolute elimination of waste, keep the following two points in mind: (1) Improving efficiency makes sense only when it is tied to cost reduction. To achieve this, we have to start producing only the things we need using minimum manpower. (2) Look at the efficiency of each operator and of each line. Then look at the operators as a group, and then at the efficiency of the entire plant (all the lines). Efficiency must be improved at each step and, at the same time, for the plant as a whole." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced." (Taiichi Ohno) 

"Let the flow manage the processes, and not let management manage the flow." (Taiichi Ohno) 

"Knowledge is something you buy with the money. Wisdom is something you acquire by doing it." (Taiichi Ohno) 

"Machines do not break down; people cause them to break." (Taiichi Ohno) 

"People who can’t understand numbers are useless. […] However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all." (Taiichi Ohno) 

"The production line that never stops is either excellent or terrible." (Taiichi Ohno) 

"To understand means to be able to do." (Taiichi Ohno) 

🖌️Joseph M Juran - Collected Quotes

"It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below." (Joseph M Juran, "Management of Inspection and Quality Control", 1945)

"Quality planning consists of developing the products and processes required to meet customer's needs." (Joseph M Juran, "Juran on planning for quality", 1988)

"Data are of high quality if they are fit for their intended use in operations, decision-making, and planning." (Joseph M Juran, 1964)

"Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action." (Joseph M Juran, "Managerial Breakthrough: The Classic Book on Improving Management Performance", 1995)

"'Benchmarking' is a recent label for the concept of setting goals based on knowing what has been achieved by others. A common goal is the requirement that the reliability of a new product be at least equal to that of the product it replaces and at least equal to that of the most reliable competing product. Implicit in the use of benchmarking is the concept that the resulting goals are attainable because they have already been attained by others." (Joseph M Juran, "The quality planning process", 1999)

"Customer satisfaction comes from those features which induce customers to buy the product. Dissatisfaction has its origin in deficiencies and is why customers complain."  (Joseph M Juran, "How to think about quality", 1999)

"Many quality failures arise because a customer uses the product in a manner different from that intended by the supplier." (Joseph M Juran, "The quality planning process", 1999)

"Quality goals that affect product salability should be based primarily on meeting or exceeding market quality. Because the market and the competition undoubtedly will be changing while the quality planning project is under way, goals should be set so as to meet or beat the competition estimated to be prevailing when the project is completed." (Joseph M Juran, "The quality planning process", 1999)

"'Quality' means freedom from deficiencies - freedom from errors that require doing work over again (rework) or that result in field failures, customer dissatisfaction, customer claims, and so on." (Joseph M Juran, "How to think about quality", 1999)

"‘Quality’ means those features of products which meet customer needs and thereby provide customer satisfaction." (Joseph M Juran, "How to think about quality", 1999)

"Quality planning generates a large amount of information that is both useful and necessary, but without a systematic way to approach the organization and analysis of this information, the planning team may be overwhelmed by the volume and miss the message it contains." (Joseph M Juran, "The quality planning process", 1999)

"The anatomy of 'quality assurance' is very similar to that of quality control. Each evaluates actual quality. Each compares actual quality with the quality goal. Each stimulates corrective action as needed. What differs is the prime purpose to be served. Under quality control, the prime purpose is to serve those who are directly responsible for conducting operations - to help them regulate current operations. Under quality assurance, the prime purpose is to serve those who are not directly responsible for conducting operations but who have a need to know - to be informed as to the state of affairs and, hopefully, to be assured that all is well." (Joseph M Juran, "How to think about quality", 1999)

"To attain quality, it is well to begin by establishing the 'vision' for the organization, along with policies and goals. Conversion of goals into results (making quality happen) is then done through managerial processes - sequences of activities that produce the intended results." (Joseph M Juran, "How to think about quality", 1999)

"When designing a product, there are actually two related but distinct aspects of what is being developed: the technology elements of what the product’s features will actually do or how it will function and the human elements of the benefits customers will receive from using the product. The two must be considered together." (Joseph M Juran, "The quality planning process", 1999)

"Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past." (Joseph M Juran)

"Improvement means the organized creation of beneficial change; the attainment of unprecedented levels of performance. A synonym is 'breakthrough.'"  (Joseph M Juran)

"Quality improvement should be directed at all areas that influence company performance - business processes as well as factory processes. Quality improvement should not be left solely to voluntary initiatives; it should be built into the system." (Joseph M Juran) 

"To achieve improvement at a revolutionary pace requires that improvement be made mandatory - that it become a part of a regular job, written into the job description."  (Joseph M Juran)

🖌️Russell L Ackoff - Collected Quotes

"Scientific models have all these connotations. They are representations of states, objects, and events. They are idealized in the sense that they are less complicated than reality and hence easier to use for research purposes. These models are easier to manipulate and 'carry' than the real thing. The simplicity of models, compared with reality, lies in the fact that only the relevant properties of reality are represented." (Russell L Ackoff, "Scientific method: optimizing applied research decisions", 1962)

"In most management problems there are too many possibilities to expect experience, judgement, or intuition to provide good guesses, even with perfect information." (Russell L Ackoff, Management Science, 1967)

"Managers need all the information they want. Most MIS designers 'determine' what information is needed by asking managers what information they would like to have. This is based on the assumption that managers know what information they need and want." (Russell L Ackoff, "Management Misinformation Systems", 1967)

"Most MIS [Management Information Systems] designers 'determine' what information is needed by asking managers what information they would like to have. This is based on the (often erroneous) assumption that managers know that information they need and want it." (Russell L Ackoff, Management Science, 1967)

"The less we understand a phenomenon, the more variables we require to explain it." (Russell L Ackoff, "Management Science", 1967)

"The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately. Such an approach is concerned with total - system performance even when a change in only one or a few of its parts is contemplated because there are some properties of systems that can only be treated adequately from a holistic point of view. These properties derive from the relationship between parts of systems: how the parts interact and fit together." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a System of Systems Concepts", 1971) 

"Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes." (Russell L Ackoff, "The future of operational research is past", 1979)

"Data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in and of itself). It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of itself. In computer parlance, a spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a Systems Theory of Organization, 1985)

"Information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection. This "meaning" can be useful, but does not have to be. In computer parlance, a relational database makes information from the data stored within it." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a Systems Theory of Organization", 1985)

"Knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that it's intent is to be useful. Knowledge is a deterministic process. When someone 'memorizes' information (as less-aspiring test-bound students often do), then they have amassed knowledge. This knowledge has useful meaning to them, but it does not provide for, in and of itself, an integration such as would infer further knowledge." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a Systems Theory of Organization", 1985)

"Information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection. This 'meaning' can be useful, but does not have to be. In computer parlance, a relational database makes information from the data stored within it." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a Systems Theory of Organization", 1985)

"Managers are incurably susceptible to panacea peddlers. They are rooted in the belief that there are simple, if not simple-minded, solutions to even the most complex of problems. And they do not learn from bad experiences. Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them. […] Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Lifetime Of Systems Thinking", Systems Thinker, 1999)

"Managers cannot learn from doing things right, only from doing them wrong." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management", 2006)

"The less sure managers are of their opinions, the more vigorously they defend them. Managers do not waste their time defending beliefs they hold strongly – they just assert them. Nor do they bother to refute what they strongly believe is false." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management", 2006)

"The lower the rank of managers, the more they know about fewer things. The higher the rank of managers, the less they know about many things." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management", 2006)

🖌️Harold Koontz - Collected Quotes

"[...] authority - the right by which superiors are able to require conformity of subordinates to decisions - is the basis for responsibility and the force that binds organization together. The process of organizing encompasses grouping of activities for purposes of management and specification of authority relationships between superiors and subordinates and horizontally between managers. Consequently, authority and responsibility relationships come into being in all associative undertakings where the superior-subordinate link exists. It is these relationships that create the basic character of the managerial job." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Although organization charts are useful, necessary, and often revealing tools, they are subject to many important limitations. In the first place, a chart shows only formal authority relationships and omits the many significant informal and informational relationships that exist in a living organization. Moreover, it does not picture how much authority exists at any point in the organization." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"[...] authority for given tasks is limited to that for which an individual may properly he. held responsible." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Authority delegations from a superior to a subordinate may be made in large or small degree. The tendency to delegate much authority through the echelons of an organization structure is referred tojas decentralization of authority. On the other hand, authority is said to be centralized wherever a manager tends not to delegate authority to his subordinates." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Authority is, of course, completely centralized when a manager delegates none, and it is possible to think of the reverse situation - an infinite delegation of authority in which no manager retains any authority other than the implicit power to recover delegated authority. But this kind of delegation is obviously impracticable, since, at some point in the organization structure, delegations must stop." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Essential to organization planning, then, is the search for an ideal form of organization to reflect the basic goals of the enterprise. This entails not only charting the main lines of organization and reflecting the organizational philosophy of the enterprise leaders (e.g., shall authority be as centralized as possible, or should the company try to break its operations down into semiautonomous product or territorial divisions?), but also a sketching out of authority relationships throughout the structure." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"If charts do not reflect actual organization and if the organization is intended to be as charted, it is the job of effective management to see that actual organization conforms with that desired. Organization charts cannot supplant good organizing, nor can a chart take the place of spelling out authority relationships clearly and completely, of outlining duties of managers and their subordinates, and of defining responsibilities." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"One of the tools for making organization principles work is the organization chart. Any organization which exists can be charted, for a chart is nothing more than an indication of how departments are tied together along their principal lines of authority." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Responsibility cannot be delegated. While a manager may delegate to a subordinate authority to accomplish a service and the subordinate in turn delegate a portion of the authority received, none of these superiors delegates any of his responsibility. Responsibility, being an obligation to perform, is owed to one's superior, and no subordinate reduces his responsibility by assigning the duty to another. Authority may be delegated, but responsibility is created by the subordinate's acceptance of his assignment." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Since a chart maps lines of authority, sometimes the mere charting of an organization will show inconsistencies and complexities and lead to their correction. A chart also acts as a guide for managers and new personnel in an organization, revealing how they tie into the entire structure. Charts are, therefore, not only evidences of organization planning but also road maps for decision making, and training devices for those who would learn how a company is organized." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"The essence of managership is the achievement of coordination among people. Coordination is a complex concept, including principles by which harmonious enterprise activity can be accomplished and the many techniques for achieving the greatest synchronized effort." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"The principle of direct contact! states that coordination must be achieved through interpersonal, horizontal relationships of people in an enterprise. People exchange ideas, ideals, prejudices, and purposes through direct personal communication much more efficiently than by any other method, and, with the understanding gained in this way, they find ways to achieve both common and personal goals." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"The primary purpose of delegation of authority is to make organization possible and to make it effective in accomplishing enterprise objectives and efficient in attaining them with the least cost of time and materials. Thus delegation - the vesting of a subordinate with a portion of his superior's authority - has as its principal purpose the creation of managerial jobs." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Viewed internally with respect to the enterprise, responsibility may be defined as the obligation of a subordinate, to whom a superior has assigned a duty, to perform the service required. The essence of responsibility is, then, obligation. It has no meaning except as it is applied to a person." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"While good charting will attempt, as far as possible, to make levels on the chart conform to levels of importance in the business enterprise, it cannot always do so. This problem can be handled by clearly spelling out authority relationships." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Another approach to management theory, undertaken by a growing and scholarly group, might be referred to as the decision theory school. This group concentrates on rational approach to decision-the selection from among possible alternatives of a course of action or of an idea. The approach of this school may be to deal with the decision itself, or to the persons or organizational group making the decision, or to an analysis of the decision process. Some limit themselves fairly much to the economic rationale of the decision, while others regard anything which happens in an enterprise the subject of their analysis, and still others expand decision theory to cover the psychological and sociological aspect and environment of decisions and decision-makers." (Harold Koontz, "The Management Theory Jungle," 1961)

"Every organization structure, even a poor one, can be charted, for a chart merely indicates how departments are tied together along the principal lines of authority. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find top managers occasionally taking pride in the fact that they do not have an organization chart or, if they do have one, feeling that the chart should be kept a secret." (Harold Koontz, "Principles of management", 1968)

"Management is defined here as the accomplishment of desired objectives by establishing an environment favorable to performance by people operating in organized groups." (Harold Koontz, "Principles of Management", 1968)

"Organization charts are subject to important limitations. A chart shows only formal authority relationships and omits the many significant informal and informational relationships." (Harold Koontz & Heinz Weihrich, "Essentials Of Management", 2006)

🖌️Kenichi Ohmae - Collected Quotes

"Analysis is the critical starting point of strategic thinking. Faced with problems, trends, events, or situations that appear to constitute a harmonious whole or come packaged as a whole by common sense of the day, the strategic thinker dissects them into their constituent parts. Then, having discovered the significance of these constituents, he reassembles them in a way calculated to maximize his advantage." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982) 

"In business as on the battlefield, the object of strategy is to bring about the conditions most favorable to one's own side, judging precisely the right moment to attack or withdraw and always assessing the limits of compromise correctly. Besides the habit of analysis, what marks the mind of the strategist is an intellectual elasticity or flexibility that enables him to come up with realistic responses to changing situations, not simply to discriminate with great precision among different shades of gray." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982)

"In strategic thinking, one first seeks a clear understanding of the particular character of each element of a situation and then makes the fullest possible use of human brainpower to restructure the elements in the most advantageous way. Phenomena and events in the real word do not always fit a linear model. Hence the most reliable means of dissecting a situation into its constituent parts and reassembling then in the desired pattern is not a step-by-step methodology such as systems analysis. Rather, it is that ultimate nonlinear thinking tool, the human brain. True strategic thinking thus contrasts sharply with the conventional mechanical systems approach based on linear thinking. But it also contrasts with the approach that stakes everything on intuition, reaching conclusions without any real breakdown or analysis." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982) 

"No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982)

"Without competitors there would be no need for strategy." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind of the Strategist", 1982)

🖌️John C Maxwell - Collected Quotes

"All great leaders have understood that their number one responsibility is cultivating their own discipline and personal growth. Those who cannot lead themselves cannot lead others." (John C Maxwell, "Developing the Leader Within You", 1993)

"The higher you want to climb, the more you need leadership. The greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be. Whatever you will accomplish is restricted by your ability to lead others." (John C. Maxwell, "Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know", 2002)

"The true measure of leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less." (John C Maxwell, Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know, 2002)

"Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing the limitations." (John C Maxwell, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", 2007)

"Personal and organizational effectiveness is proportionate to the strength of leadership." (John C Maxwell, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", 2007)

"The more intentional you are about your leadership growth, the greater your potential for becoming the leader you're capable of being. Never stop learning." (John C. Maxwell, "The Leadership Handbook", 2015)