PHIL CROSBY

The great discoveries are usually obvious.

The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.

Very few of the great leaders ever get through their careers without failing, sometimes dramatically.

You don't have to be noisy to be effective.

Successful people breed success.

In a true zero-defects approach, there are no unimportant items.

Quality has to be caused, not controlled.

Selecting the right person for the right job is the largest part of coaching.

You have to lead people gently toward what they already know is right.

A rule to live by: I won't use anything I can't explain in five minutes.

No one can remember more than three points.

Change should be a friend. It should happen by plan, not by accident.

Being convinced one knows the whole story is the surest way to fail.

Quality is the result of a carefully constructed cultural environment. It has to be the fabric of the organization, not part of the fabric.

Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.

Making a wrong decision is understandable. Refusing to search continually for learning is not.

If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.

Eliminating what is not wanted or needed is profitable in itself.

We can spend our whole lives underachieving.

It is always cheaper to do the job right the first time.

When you're out of quality, you're out of business.

It isn't what you find, it's what you do about what you find.

Many managers feel, somewhat cynically, that people are being paid to do their jobs and that's that. This attitude reflects an insensitivity to people that is a trademark of many hockey-style managers.

You are going to be measured anyway by some means, fair or foul. Usually the one doing the measuring has nothing specific in mind; so he does it by the seat of his pants. Careers are destroyed in this manner.

It is not possible to know what you need to learn.