I learned that, before you reach an objective, you must be ready with a new one, and you must start to communicate it to the organization. But it is not the goal itself that is important.

We have 50,000 moments of truth every day.

If anything goes wrong, the customer doesn't care whose fault it is. He's the one who's going to suffer anyway.

If you're not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.

SAS is 'created' 50 million times a year, 15 seconds at a time. These 50 million 'moments of truth' are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. They are the moments when we must prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative.

Quality doesn't mean we have to be 100 percent better in any one thing; it means we strive to be 1 percent better in 100 things.

The moral of the story: perceptions are everything. During each moment you are in contact with a customer, you are the organization.