At times, a simple quotation can help explain a complex principle:
"An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise."
- William Dean Howells
"Don't rate potential over performance."
- Jim Fassel
"Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past."
- Joseph M. Juran
"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing."
-
W. Edwards Deming
"In God we trust, all others bring data."
- W. Edwards Deming
"It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality."
- Harold S. Geneen
"Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can't measure something, you can't understand it. If you can't understand it, you can't control it. If you can't control it, you can't improve it."
- H. James Harrington
"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."
- George Bernard Shaw
"What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated."
- John E. Jones
"When dealing with numerical data, approximately right is better than precisely wrong."
- Carl G. Thor
"Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action."
-Joseph M. Juran
"You get what you measure. Measure the wrong thing and you get the wrong behaviors."
- John H. Lingle
