Managing For Quality

Thoughts of people on the management and implementation of quality practices and attitudes.

A man is known by the company he organizes.
—Ambrose Bierce

Shelving hard decisions is the least ethical course.
—Adrian Cadbury

Deliberate with caution but act with decision and promptness.
—Charles Caleb Colton

There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and impartial. One is to be completely ignorant. The other is to be completely indifferent. Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.
—Charles P. Curtis

It is useless to make a formal decision with which group members informally disagree.
—William G. Dyer

In every affair, consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it.
—Epictetus

Indecision is often worse than wrong action.
—Gerald Ford

Nothing chastens a planner more than the knowledge that he will have to carry out the plan.
—General James Gavin

Quality control is applicable to any kind of enterprise. In fact, it must be applied in every enterprise.
—Kaoru Ishikawa

A good rule in organizational analysis is that no meeting of the minds is really reached until we talk of specific actions or decisions. We can talk of who is responsible for budgets, or inventory, or quality, but little is settled. It is only when we get down to the action words—measure, compute, prepare, check, endorse, recommend, approve—that we can make clear who is to do what.
—Joseph M. Juran

One of life's most painful moments comes when we must admit that we didn't do our homework, that we are not prepared.
—Merlin Olsen

If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done.
—Norman Vincent Peale

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and, if they can't find them, make them.
—George Bernard Shaw

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
—Alfred North Whitehead

Seek simplicity and distrust it.
—Alfred North Whitehead