Quotes in systems thinking

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.

Money and time spent for training will be ineffective unless inhibitors to good work are removed.

When you want something really bad, you will put up with a lot of flaws. But if you do not yet know you want something, your tolerance will be much lower. That’s why it is especially important for us to build a beautiful, elegant and considerate piece of software. Every bit of grace, refinement, and thoughtfulness on our part will pull people along. Every petty irritation will stop them and give the impression that it is not worth it.

A numerical goal leads to distortion and faking, especially when the system is not capable of meeting the goal. Anybody will meet the quota (goal) allotted to him. He is not responsible for the losses so generated.

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

Every time you write code or introduce third-party services, you are introducing the possibility of failure into your system.

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.

The merit rating nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, [and] nourishes rivalry and politics. It leaves people bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior. It is unfair, as it ascribes to the people in a group differences that may be caused totally by the system that they work in.

Management of a system requires knowledge of the interrelationships between all of the components within the system and of everybody that works in it.

The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.