Quotes by Peter Scholtes

People don't resist change, they resist being changed.

In a world without data, opinion prevails.

The common objection to seniority pay is, "It's rewarding dead wood!" My response is, "Why do you hire dead wood? Or why do you hire live wood and kill it?"

Systems are created, sustained, and improved by insightful and interactive work on the system, not by using carrots and sticks. Measurable goals do not improve systems; accountability does not improve systems. Improving systems improves systems.

Your purpose is to identify where in the process things go wrong, not who messed up. Look for systemic causes, not culprits.

There is a difference between having a vision and suffering from a hallucination.

You can't work directly on morale. You work on other things and morale will come along with it.

Less than 5 percent result from people committing errors. Human error is a negligible source of our problems. Yet because we don't understand systems, we act as though human error were the primary cause of our problems.

We will work with each other we will work side by side
And we'll guard each man's dignity and save each man's pride

I don't think everybody dislikes change, I think people dislike being changed.