Quality Employees Quotes & Sayings

This poster in a Nordstrom's department store once caught my attention: "The only difference between stores is the way they treat their customers." That's a bold statement. Most stores would advertise the quality of their merchandise or their wide selection as what sets them apart from the rest. The difference between Nordstrom's and other stores, according to an employee of the competition, is that other stores are organization-oriented; Nordstrom's is people-oriented. Their employees are trained to respond quickly and kindly to customer complaints. As a result, according to writer Nancy Austin, "Nordstrom's doesn't have customers; it has fans." A study by TARP, Technical Assistance — John C. Maxwell

Quality, productivity, and innovation can be significantly increased if companies provide all employees with practical tools for exploiting potential information — William Hunter

Tonight I'm not going to make love to you, Blaire. I'm going to own you. Do you hear me? — Mia Asher

But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing ... and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, "I am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. — Robert M. Pirsig

Jobs had not tempered his way of dealing with employees. "He applied charm or public humiliation in a way that in most cases proved to be pretty effective," Tribble recalled. But sometimes it wasn't. One engineer, David Paulsen, put in ninety-hour weeks for the first ten months at NeXT. He quit when "Steve walked in one Friday afternoon and told us how unimpressed he was with what we were doing." When Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better. "Part of my responsibility is to be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." But he still had his spirit and charisma. There were plenty of field trips, visits by akido masters, and off-site retreats. — Walter Isaacson

Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path. — Carl Sagan

It's hard to overestimate how much the perception of the quality of the V.C. firm you're with matters - the signal it sends to other V.C.s, to potential employees, to customers, to the tech press. It's like where you went to college. — Stewart Butterfield

W. Edwards Deming, the chief instigator of the Total Quality Management movement that revolutionized manufacturing, told a story about a company that used a variety of flammable products in its production process. Unsurprisingly, fires frequently broke out in its plants. But the president of the company didn't think he had a situation problem; he thought he had a person problem. He sent a letter to every one of the company's 10,500 employees, pleading with them to set fewer fires. Ahem. (What — Chip Heath

Employees are given the chance to help shape their company by participating in a company-wide communications program making suggestions on waste reduction, environmental improvement, customer satisfaction, quality improvement, and safety issues. — Stephen Covey

To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you. — Eric S. Raymond

Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions. — Ben Horowitz

We define a "true culture of quality" as an environment in which employees not only follow quality guidelines but also consistently see others taking quality-focused actions, hear others talking about quality, and feel quality all around them. — Anonymous

The legendary statistical consultant W. Edwards Deming, ... has called the system by which merit is appraised and rewarded 'the most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western world' ... it is simply unfair to the extent that employees are held responsible for what are, in reality, systemic factors that are beyond their control. — Alfie Kohn

I am not being ridiculous," said Lupin steadily. "Tonks deserves somebody young and whole." "But she wants you," said Mr. Weasley, with a small smile. "And after all, Remus, young and whole men do not necessarily remain so. — J.K. Rowling

That's where I got my start and where I'll continue to work, but I can't tell you the number of films between Drugstore Cowboy and Curly Sue that I auditioned for and wanted that didn't choose me. — Kelly Lynch

I went to glam shows and was inspired by Bowie. — Jay Gordon

Did you ever feel as if the whole world was a tuxedo, and you were a pair of brown shoes? — George Gobel

And in the process, we have come up with fuels - algae-based fuels, isobutanol-based fuels and other fuels - that we think will power the planes in the future so that, you know, by 2020 I hope that our planes will be powered on fuels that are clean fuels and are not polluting the environment so that we'll have a green airline and an airline that actually has fuels that will be hopefully cheaper than the dirty fuels of the past. So [we're] doing good and also turning a profit at the same time. — Richard Branson