25 Quotes to Inspire your Operational Excellence Initiatives

Over the years, I've used quotes to help inspire and motivate the teams charged with making process and operational excellence real.

1. 25Quotes to
inspire
Your
Operational
Excellence
Initiatives

2. If I had nine hours to chop down a
tree, I’d spend the first six
sharpening my axe.
Abraham Lincoln

3. If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend
55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5
minutes about solutions.
Albert Einstein

4. A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

5. Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.
Dwight Eisenhower

6. If one does not know to which port one is sailing…
…no wind is favorable.
Lucius AnnaeusSeneca

7. To achieve great things, two things are nee
ed: a plan and not quite enough time.
Leonard
Bernstein

8. Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

10. To complicate is easy, to simplify is hard. To
complicate, just add. Everyone is able to
complicate. Few people are able to simplify.
Bruno Munari

12. We are all faced with a series of great
opportunities brilliantly disguised as
impossible situations.
Charles Swindoll

14. The first problem for all of us, men and
women, is not to learn but to unlearn.
Gloria Steinem

15. A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must
move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
Frank Herbert, Dune

16. If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Henry Ford

17. Progress is impossible
without change, and
those who cannot
change their minds
cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw

18. The secret of getting ahead is
getting started. The secret of
getting started is breaking your
complex, overwhelming tasks
into small manageable tasks
and then starting the first one.
Mark Twain

20. Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton

21. Everyone has an invisible sign around their neck saying, “Make me feel
important.” Never forget this message when working with people.
Mary Kay Ash

22. I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the
goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.
Mia Hamm

24. The most dangerous kind of waste
is waste we don’t recognize.
Shigeo Shingo

25. The only
way to have
a good idea
is to have
lots of ideas.
Winston Churchill

26. Hanging a sign on a cow that says “I am a horse” doesn’t make it a horse.
Unknown