My favorite W. Edwards Deming quotes:
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it does.”
“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.”
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“It is not enough to do your best, you must know what to do, then do your best.”
Two Quotes of my own:
“Whatever reports you are getting today have likely solved all the problems they’re going to. To solve other problems, you need different data, or a new way to look at the current data.”
“The very first thing that every business owner needs to do is to make sure that the person who is giving you your data (quite often the bookkeeper) is competent to compile the data and that the data are reliable. The next thing is to determine whether you can read it and know what it means. Once you learn to understand it … and not before … you can finally say you own a business and not merely an expensive hobby.”
The Profit Power Series teaches you how to do the first and second things, and then teaches you what to do and how to do the rest.
“Sue Canyon Means Business”