Quotes in critical thinking

There are three ways to get better figures... Improve the system... Distort the system... Distort the figures

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

A system is never the sum of its parts its the product of their interaction.

I achieved my goal by not my aim. That happens a lot, we honestly translate aims to goals. And then we do stupid things in the name of the goal that gets it the way of the aim. We forget the aim sometimes and put the goal in its place.

Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.

Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.

A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.