When we 'plan', we expect the actual project result to conform to that plan, and then deviations become team mistakes or sign of the team’s failure to work enough. When we 'speculate', we take the opposite perspective – it’s the plan we suspect was wrong. The plan, or speculation, is a piece of information, but it is only one piece that we will examine to determine our course of action in the next iteration.

Jim Highsmith

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have live. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

Nelson Mandela

Attempting to change an organization’s culture is a folly, it always fails. Peoples’ behavior (the culture) is a product of the system; when you change the system peoples’ behavior changes.

John Seddon

Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.

James A. Lovell

Companies exist to organize work better than either customers can do by themselves or markets can do it for them.

Ronald Coase

Beat horses, and they will run faster - for a while.

William E. Deming

Today's successes will be tommorow's old news. The question is not if, but when.
At some point your products will become obsolete, your customer's tastes will change, or technology will render your business model uncompetitive.

Robert Simons

A lack of speed is a strategic disadvantage.

Jeff Jarvis

Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced.

Taiichi Ohno

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.

Jeff Bezos

Why not make the work easier and more interesting so that people do not have to sweat? The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people’s creativity. People don’t go to Toyota to 'work' they go there to think.

Taiichi Ohno

Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.

Michael LeBoeuf

When the customer comes first, the customer will last.

Robert Half

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.

Walt Disney

There is only one boss:  the customer.  And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

Sam Walton

Management is about avoiding hazards. Leadership is about creating opportunities.

Tom Flick

Go see, ask why, show respect.

Fujio Cho

I am not saying here that there is no information in big data. There is plenty of information. The problem — the central issue — is that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack.

Nassim Taleb

A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin.  Methods have to change.  Focus has to change.  Values have to change.  The sum total of those changes is transformation. 

Andrew Grove

Excellente ondernemingen geloven niet in voortreffelijkheid, maar alleen in constante verbetering en constante verandering.

Tom Peters

Adjustment of a process that is in statistical control, initiated on appearance of a fault item or a mistake, as it arose from an obvious immediate cause, will only create more trouble, not less.

William Edwards Deming

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 is later, you become a hero.

William Edwards Deming

A victorious army wins its victories before seeking battle.

Sun Tsu

Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.

Edward de Bono

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

Desmond Tutu

Je weet niet of je op koers ligt als je geen bestemming hebt bepaald.

Robert Kaplan & David Norton

Als je niet vanuit processen denkt, zijn de meeste inspanningen om je bedrijf te verbeteren ongeveer even belangrijk als het hergroeperen van de dekstoelen op de Titanic.

Michael Hammer

.. when I have won a victory I do not repeat my tactics but respond to circumstance in an infinite variety of way.

Sun Tsu

Diensten zijn abstract; presenter ze dus zo tastbaar mogelijk.

Phillip Kotler

He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious.

Sun Tsu

Winst is als zuurstof. Je kunt niet zonder. Maar als zuurstof een doel wordt, ben je een longpatiënt.

Fons Trompenaars

Iedereen wordt getest in het leven, maar slechts enkelen halen kracht en wijsheid uit deze ervaringen. Deze mensen noemen we leiders.

Warren Bennis

'Best practices' vertegenwoordigen altijd de wijsheid van gisteren.

Gary Hamel

Nieuwe technologie versterkt wat er gebeurt. Het vervangt niets.

Charles Handy

Zaken voor elkaar krijgen heeft niets te maken met macht of hiërarchie. Het gaat om passie, verbeelding en doorzettingsvermogen.

Tom Peters

If your team is filled with people who work for the company, you’ll soon be defeated by tribes of people who work for a cause.

Seth Godin

Een probleem van veel managers is dat ze eigenlijk niet kunnen managen.

Manfred Kets de Vries

Hard work is painful when life is devoid of purpose. But when you live for something greater than yourself and the gratification of your own ego, then hard work becomes a labor of love.

Steve Pavlina

An organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions.

Daniel Kahneman

People call me a guru because they can't spell charlatan.

Peter Drucker

Delegation requires the willingness to pay for short term failures in order to gain long term competency.

Dave Ramsey

Management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do, and in fact is usually management by fear.

William Edwards Deming

Good people are not just crucial to a business, they are the business!

Richard Branson

Corporate culture is what employees do when they know nobody's looking.

Bob Diamond

You can take my factories, burn up my buildings, but give me my people and I'll build the business right back again.

Henry Ford

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.

Theodore Levitt

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

William Edwards Deming

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.

Albert Schweitzer

In any large organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way... do not complain about illogical behavior...

Eliyahu Goldratt