This page is a collection of favorite quotes of our folks . Hope you enjoy them. Please suggest others.

Alan Shalloway

Alan Shalloway

My biggest problem isn't i don't know what I don't know. It's I don't do what I do know. Keith Cunningham

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one's life. Ultimately, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what's so, and your stand. Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That is not the truth. It is a place to stand. No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself - an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life. Werner Erhard

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. Malcolm Forbes

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Benjamin Franklin

I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem. Buckminster Fuller

Never try to sell a meteor to a dinosaur. It wastes your time and irritates the dinosaur. Hugh Macleod

The following passage occurs near the beginning of H.M. Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951):

... but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

Just because everything is different, it doesn’t mean that anything has changed. Irene Peter

People know what to do, they don't do what they know. Tony Robbins

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so. Will Rogers

George Bernard Shaw - A Splendid Torch

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially about the future - Mark Twain.

Let's make toast American style - you burn, I'll scrape. Edwards Deming.

Stop starting and start finishing. David Anderson (and most Kanban coaches since)

It depends! Consultants everywhere.

My life is not this steeply sloping hour (added 3/20/2011)
By Rainer Maria Rilke

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.

"Theory without experience is useless. Experience without theory is expensive." A synopsis of Deming's thoughts in Out of the Crisis.

Thus, the task is not so much to see
what no one yet has seen,
but to think what nobody yet has thought
about that which everybody sees.
- Shopenhauer

I walk forward slowly but never walk back - Abraham Lincoln

A question is relevant if the answer can make a difference in our choice of an action, or can change the level of confidence that we have in a choice. Otherwise, it is irrelevant. [The choice to perform an action] can be governed as much by what we may wish to avoid as by what we wish to achieve.
- Moshe Rubenstein

Often we move too quickly into a problem solving mode when we should spend more time on problem representation. Think of the word representation as if it were written as re-presentation. A problem well understood and well stated is often half solved.
- Moshe Rubenstein

A problem exists when the following elements are present in the mind of a human problem solver:

• A perceived present or initial state
• A perceived desired goal or end state
• Perceived obstacles that prevent bridging the gap between the present and goal state

The level of difficulty of a problem is determined by the perception of how insurmountable the obstacles are.
- Moshe Rubenstein

I think the most important question facing humanity is, "Is the universe a friendly place?" This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves. Einstein

Favorite Laws

Goodhart's Law: Once a social or economic indicator or other surrogate measure is made a target for the purpose of conducting social or economic policy, then it will lose the informaiton content that would qualify it to play that role."

Quotes of My Own

The power of now is accepting things as they are, so you can see what needs to be done, while freeing you from the fears of the future and the limitations of the past so you can bring all of your abilities to work on the problem at hand.

or, for those who prefer proper English:

The power of now is accepting things as they are, so you can see what needs to be done, while freeing you from the fears of the future and the limitations of the past. This enables you to bring all of your abilities to work on the problem at hand.

It's amazing how many years it takes to see the most obvious of things.

Telling people to 'just do it' just doesn't do it.

The best communicators are the ones who know that they are poor communicators.

Shalloway's Law - When N things need to change and N > 1, then Shalloway will find at most N - 1 things.

Shalloway's Principle - Avoid situations where Shalloway's law applies.

Shalloway's Corrolary to Shalloway's law - when you've found your second case, you know you won't find them all.

A pragmatist works within existing constraints while trying to eliminate them.

A purist insists others work the correct way and then makes them wrong when the don't.

There is a big difference between how complex something is and how complex the explanation of it is.

Software development is a complicated problem. Getting people to agree how to do it well is a complex problem.

Unpredictable does not mean uncontrollable.

There is a big difference between micro-predictability (red/black) and macro-predictability (more money stays at the table than leaves).

One must remember that simple, complicated, chaos & complex often reflect our limited understanding more than the problem we are labeling

The primary question is not how to have the teams coordinate with each other as much as it is how do you reduce the need for them to coordinate. This, by the way, is difficult to do from the team level.

Dogma - you persistently work towards a goal without ever questioning your methods.

Persistence - you dogmatically work towards a goal without ever being committed to which method you use.

Busyness is bad business.

Coaches do not supply the 'what'. They supply the 'why' when the 'what' they see being done is not addresing the why.

Whatever we don't challenge will become an impediment eventually.

While I am pre-cognitive impaired, I'm a big believer in macro-predictability. (See Types of Process - by Don Reinertsen for more info)

If one is concerned about the quality of their quesitons they will certainly miss asking some quality questions.

People confuse simple with minimalistic. This typically results in simplistic, not simple.

One shouldn't start with simplicity as the goal. Simplicity is a means. What is your desired end result? What is the best way to get there?

Go to top