Quotes in organization as a system

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

the performance of the whole is never the sum of the performance of the parts taken separately, but it's the product of their interactions.

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.

A company could put a top man at every position and be swallowed by a competitor with people only half as good, but who are working together.

The consumer is the most important point on the production-line.

We need to work together to optimize the system as a whole, not to seek to optimize separate pieces... Optimizing separate pieces destroys the effectiveness of the whole. For the organization to work well as a whole, the components must work together.

Quality, productivity, and innovation can be significantly increased if companies provide all employees with practical tools for exploiting potential information.

Toyota's real achievement is not merely the creation and use of the tools themselves; it is in making all its work a series of nested, ongoing experiments, be the work as routine as installing seats in cars or as complex, idiosyncratic, and large scale as designing and launching a new model or factory.

The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.

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.