Quotes in systems thinking

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them.

Good design can't fix broken business models.

One gets a good rating for fighting a fire. The result is visible; can be quantified. If you do it right the first time, you are invisible. You satisfied the requirements. That is your job. Mess it up, and correct it later, you become a hero.

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

The greatest waste in America is failure to use the abilities of people.

Putting out fires is not improvement of the process. Neither is discovery and removal of a special cause detected by a point out of control. This only puts the process back to where it should have been in the first place.

American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don’t know what to copy!

blame the process not the person. We need to ask, "how did the process allow this to happen?"

Deming’s First Theorem: “Nobody gives a hoot about profits.”
Deming’s Second Theorem: “We are being ruined by best efforts.”

If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them.