W. Edwards Deming - Aim Quotes

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Management's job. It is management's job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre.

W. Edwards Deming
Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options.

W. Edwards Deming
It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of a specific activity or method. It must always relate to a better life for everyone.

W. Edwards Deming
A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system.... The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition.

W. Edwards Deming
Part of America's industrial problems is the aim of its corporate managers. Most American executives think they are in the business to make money, rather than products or service... The Japanese corporate credo, on the other hand, is that a company should become the world's most efficient provider of whatever product and service it offers. Once it becomes the world leader and continues to offer good products, profits follow.

W. Edwards Deming
What is a system? A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment. (We are of course talking here about a man-made system.)

W. Edwards Deming
The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

W. Edwards Deming
The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain - stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment - over the long term.

W. Edwards Deming