Quotes by John Hunter
A tightrope over a chasm is fine for a trained acrobat with a balancing pole. It is foolish for someone without the right training or tools. They would be better served with something else - a rope bridge with railings.
Good execution of performance appraisal is not the solution. More people are realizing that improving how performance appraisal are done is an attempt to do the wrong thing better. If you insist on doing the wrong thing, I suppose you might as well do it better but how about just not doing the wrong thing at all?
Why did the system allow that mistake to be made?
What? You can’t expect us to design systems that prevent mistakes from being made.
Yes I can. That is much more sensible than expecting people never to make a mistake.
Good management is good management: it doesn't matter if someone figured out the good idea 100 years ago or last week.
Any sufficiently inept bureaucracy is indistinguishable from an organization intent on punishing those that rely on them.
Making it harder to make mistakes and making mistakes that are made more visible is good. Preventing them is even better.