Quotes in improvement

statistical methods appropriate for iterative inquiry can help the investigator not only to answer questions originally asked but also to catalyze the posing of new questions. Thus greatly assisting the subject matter specialist's attempt to understand the phenomenon under study.

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this:
94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management)
6% special

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

A common disease that afflicts management and government administration the world over is the impression that “Our problems are different.” They are different, to be sure, but the principles that will help to improve quality of product and of service are universal in nature.

Managers must see themselves as experimenters who lead learning, not dictators who impose control.

Every process generates information that can be used to improve it.

For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses.

It is extension of application that discloses inadequacy of a theory, and need for revision, or even new theory. Again, without theory, there is nothing to revise. Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory, there is no learning.

Management must provide employees with tools that will enable them to do their jobs better, and with encouragement to use these tools. In particular, they must collect data.