"Three years after the publication of Reengineering the Corporation, Hammer admitted that he ‘wasn’t smart enough’ about the importance of factoring in people."
Howard Eisenberg, Reengineering and Dumbsizing: "Mismanagement of the Knowledge Resource", Quality Progress, May 1997

"In turbulent business environments, managers are discovering that a conventional, top down approach to strategic planning is no longer viable or effective…. Active adaptation to turbulent environments requires an organization to tap the knowledge, passion, and creativity of its people… every employee must become an operational strategist…. Strategic planning must no longer be considered an elitist activity that happens behind closed doors…. Rather, planning must be viewed as a continuous, interactive, and democratic process that empowers managers and employees together to create the future of the firm.
Ronald E. Purser & Steven Cabana, "Involve Employees at Every Level of Strategic Planning", Quality Progress, May 1997

"American Management Has Missed the Point - the Point is Management Itself"
"No concept has been more misunderstood by American managers, academics, and workers than productivity."
Yoshi Tsurimi, "American Management Has Missed the Point - the Point is Management Itself" Dial, Sept. 1981

"Only better management can bring the needed improvement. The big question is, how long will it be until top management become active in their responsibilities?"

" Companies with good management will require five years to remove the barriers that make it impossible for the hourly worker to take pride in his work. Many companies will require ten years"

"Who will survive? Companies that adopt constancy of purpose for quality, productivity, and service, and go about it with intelligence and perseverance have a chance to survive…. Actually, the problem will solve itself. The only survivors will be companies with a constancy of purpose for quality, productivity, and service"
W. Edwards Deming, "Out of the Crisis", 1982, 1986

"The vitality of an enterprise can come only through the release of individual potential directed toward the achievement of corporate purpose."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"In healthy companies, goals are clearly perceived, well communicated, and readily accepted. In the neurotic corporation, goals are ill-defined, transitory, and volatile. Human action under these conditions, in the interest of self preservation, can only be at best opportunistic. Healthy companies permit a type of action characterized by enthusiasm, responsiveness, drive and endurance."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"The follies of the systems of management that … followed the war are all too obvious. They must now be blasted out, new construction commenced. Patchwork will not suffice.

Everyone doing his best is not the answer. Everyone is doing his best. It is necessary that people understand the reason for the transformation that is necessary for survival. Moreover, there must be consistency of understanding and of effort. There is know substitute for knowledge.

A conjurer may pull a rabbit out of a hat, but he cannot pull quality out of a hat.

The biggest problem that most any company in the Western world faces is not its competitors, nor the Japanese. The biggest problems are self inflicted. Created right at home by management that are off course in the competitive world of today.

Recognition of the distinction between a stable system and an unstable one is vital for management. The responsibility for improvement of a stable system rests totally on management. A stable system is one whose performance is predictable. It is reached by removal, one by one, of special causes of trouble, best detected by a statistical signal."
Source: W. Edwards. Deming, Washington, 1986. From ‘The Deming Management Method, by Mary Walton, 1986

"It is very difficult to see how an organization or an individual can even begin to plan until concrete objectives are clearly defined. If the motivational systems of the organization and its members are not understood or are contradictory, it is unlikely that either the individual or the organization will attain success experience. Thus, the executive’s most important task is to stimulate a subordinate to commit himself to a program of challenging objectives that are consonant with corporate goals."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"The great organizations of the world have been those which determined their own destiny in terms of purpose and objectives… A study of history of these movements shows how specific planning and organized effort were essential for implementation of the basic purposes. The sweep towards the rise of Western civilization has been to ideas, not material things.."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"It is not necessary to create a purpose … to justify corporate existence. Any thriving enterprise is fulfilling a significant purpose. The obvious primary purpose is to make a profit. This objective is highly valid. It does not need to be debated."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"There is tremendous latent power in any organization that can be released by a clear communication of basic, underlying purpose and objectives. Since this fact is not always clearly understood by members of the organization, a fundamental challenge to management is to tap this power and direct it toward achievement."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"The effective manager assumes the responsibility for getting the job done; he gets results from people; and he ensures that people performing the work have an opportunity to grow and develop in the process of doing it…. A manager’s description of results expected from subordinates should spell out the key relationships among people. These descriptions should establish the overall limits, yet provide as much latitude as possible for getting the work done." (*****More on page 116*****)
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"A fundamental force in the development process is effective communication. In almost every company we know, the degree of success in self development enjoyed by the management is intimately related to the ease, clarity, and appropriateness of communication within the organization."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"It is rarely possible or even feasible for management to communicate at the same level of complexity at which it thinks…. What management seeks to transmit is that it expects specific kinds of performance that will lead to the realization of its objectives."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"The prerequisite for effective communication is management’s clear understanding of its objectives, and its expectations for the organization that implements those objectives."
Source: Managers For Tomorrow, By the staff of Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, Edited by Charles D. Flory., 1965. Mentor Executive Library Books

"To motivate these changes in attitude, the organization as a whole must be dissatisfied with the present situation, to become aware of a better system, and develop the know-how to implement the new system.
"William E. Conway, Winning the War on ", 1994

"The success or failure of any organization is basically determined by the quality of interactions among its core element, its members…. The degree to which all members of an organization employ their abilities and influence in the effective utilization of resources depends upon how well the managers understand and do their jobs….
There is a clear connection between the personal objectives of individuals in an organization and the objectives of the organization itself, and establishing this connection in practice is the job of the manager."
Herbert G. Hicks & C Ray Gullet, "The Management of Organizations", 1976

". . . it seems to me that BPR is a management philosophy as much as anything. One that has to be integrated with the culture of the firm. BPR should in this sense be an ongoing activity beginning with senior management reviewing their mission statement on an annual basis. Attempts to determine readiness are really attempts to measure how much the philosophy of BPR as a management technique has filtered into the organization."
Bruce Laidlaw, Consultant

"An industry (is springing up) around the need to cope with the faster pace and constant change in business. . . , it's no surprise that companies and consultants are looking in all directions to find effective programs."
Training and Development, March 1996. "Coaching Today's Executives" Margaret Olesen

"Some of us in the leadership-development field started writing about the call for revolutionary change. But now in the mid-nineties that challenge is past. We're well into the era of trying to figure out how to deliver on the challenge."
Training and Development May 1996 "The Pepsi Challenge: Building a leader-driven organization." Noel Tichey & Christopher De Rose.

"Over the past few years, companies have spent tens of billions of dollars on business transformation schemes. Droves of management consultants hit the beaches, dug up the dirt, presented extensive recommendations, then snapped their attaches closed and left. But, according to Information Week magazine, two thirds of those reengineering plans failed for one simple reason. They were never properly implemented. People weren't trained well. Systems were improperly installed."
IBM Advertisement, 'Canadian' magazine June 96

"Hierarchical management is a dinosaur brought about by the inefficiencies of managing information hence the number of levels needed to manage. With newer technologies such as EDMS, Intranets, e-forms, workflow e-mail, there is less need for managers. There is a need for co-ordinators and organizers as part of the team. And there is a need for leaders. The job description of manager should be redefined as organizations flatten. Current "knowledge" workers need less supervision. They do need direction and they do need co-ordination."

"... People are the most valuable asset that an organization has. They are not expendable as many organizations have found out. Much of the corporate knowledge and wisdom is in the grey matter in many of the senior and middle managers. This includes the processes, culture, politics, procedures, and unwritten rules that many of the consultants miss. It is impossible to determine all the situations in the short weeks or days that are allocated to determine the business processes and rules that run organizations. Many of the reengineering efforts fail because the wisdom is not uncovered nor sought."
Mark Scherling, Consultant