Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.

In systems thinking, increases in understanding are believed to be obtainable by expanding the systems to be understood, not by reducing them to their elements. Understanding proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to the whole as knowledge does.

A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say "no" but none to say "yes."

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.

Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.

Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.

Creativity is the ability to identify self-imposed constraints, remove them, and explore the consequences of their removal.