61 Best Lean Management Quotes for Leaders in 2024

Knowing Is Not Enough; We Must Apply. Wishing Is Not Enough; We Must Do.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximize your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit.

Jim Rohn

If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.

Steve Jobs

Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.

Joe Sparano

Consistent alignment of capabilities and internal processes with the customer value proposition is the core of any strategy execution.

Robert S. Kaplan

Action may not always bring success, but there is no success without action.

Benjamin Disraeli

Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before.

Shigeo Shingo

To be competitive, we have to look for every opportunity to improve efficiencies and productivity while increasing quality. Lean manufacturing principles have improved every aspect of our processes.

Cynthia Fanning

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

Thomas A. Edison

We always want to create something new out of nothing, and without research, and without long hard hours of effort. But there is no such things as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence—and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap.

James Dyson

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.

Andy Grove

If you need a new process and don’t install it, you pay for it without getting it.

Ken Stork

There is no such thing as a boring project. There are only boring executions.

Irene Etzkorn

We always need to sharpen our skills and look for new opportunities.

Bill Schmid

 Chaotic Action is Preferable to Orderly Inaction.

Karl E. Weick

Sometimes no problem is a sign of a different problem.

Mark Rosenthal

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Warren Buffett

I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.

Felix Frankfurter

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

Tom Peters

Great companies will have strong lean vision in place with the Senior Management Vision and are working daily at getting on with doing a small number of important things consistently – day in, day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, as part of the middle management action plans. And finally the results must be visible at the Shop floor level.  That is what make for effective lean leadership within companies.

TXM

Enjoy yourself. If you can’t enjoy yourself, enjoy somebody else.

Jack Schaefer

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

Henry Ford

Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Helen Keller

I regarded our progress merely as an invitation to do more – as an indication that we had reached a place where we might begin to perform a real service.

Henry Ford

If you need a new process and don’t install it, you pay for it without getting it.

Ken Stork

Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It’s coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting the engineering, as well as final assembly.

James Dyson

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Lean is about constant ticking, not occasional kicking.

Alex Miller

Personally I cringe at the word ‘leader.’ It’s more about getting people do what they’re passionate about and putting them in the right context or setting. They’re the ones doing the hard work.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

Gore Vidal

We always need to sharpen our skills and look for new opportunities.

Bill Schmid

Due to the set-up times, the tendency is to produce in batches that are larger than the order quantities. This supposedly utilizes the equipment more efficiently, reduces set-up costs, and reduces unit product cost. But any production in excess of immediate market demand ends up as finished-goods inventory. The result of producing these large batches in today’s competitive marketplace is poor customer service despite high levels of inventory.

M. Michael Umble and Mokshagundam L. Srikanth.

We think it’s important for employees to have fun… it drives employee engagement.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappas

To succeed, one must be creative and persistent.

John H. Johnson

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than trying to solve them.

Henry Ford

Manufacturers are wise to embrace lean manufacturing.

Robert Niemiec

Today’s standardization…is the necessary foundation on which tomorrow’s improvements will be based.  If you think “standardization” as the best you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow – you get somewhere.  But if you think of standards as confining, then progress stops.

Henry Ford in 1926

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

Bruce Lee

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

Will Durant’s summation of Aristotle’s ideas

Copying your competitor won’t help you beat your competitor. You need to think beyond your competitor.

Gerhard Plenert and Bill Kirchmier.

If I have over a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I’m satisfied.

Alfred Nobel

If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.

David Viscott

If we reduce batch sizes by half, we also reduce by half the time it will take to process a batch. That means we reduce queue and wait by half as well. Reduce those by half, and we reduce by about half the total time parts spend in the plant. Reduce the time parts spend in the plant and our total lead time condenses. And with faster turn-around on orders, customers get their orders faster.

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

You must have a supplier relationship of constant improvement.

W. Edwards Deming

There are three kinds of leaders. Those that tell you what to do. Those that allow you to do what you want. And Lean leaders that come down to the work and help you figure it out.

John Shook

All progress occurs because people dare to be different.

 Henry Miller

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Albert Einstein

There are so many men who can figure costs, and so few who can measure values. 

Author Unknown

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

George S. Patton

When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Denis Healy

To be competitive, we have to look for every opportunity to improve efficiencies and productivity while increasing quality.  Lean manufacturing principles have improved every aspect of our processes.

Cynthia Fanning

Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.

Anne Sweeney

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.  

Winston Churchill

If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you envision it, it’s possible. If you schedule it, it’s real.

Tony Robbins

Managers who master the hammer and expect all problems to behave like nails find organizational life confusing and frustrating.

 Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal

A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.

Andrew Grove

One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their greatest surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn’t do.

Henry Ford.

All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get. 

Arthur W. Jones

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Vincent Van Gough

The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.

Amelia Earhart

If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you will find an excuse.

Jim Rohn