Anthony Stafford Beer Quotes

The strategies that managers employ are at least as important as the facilities at their disposal.

There is, then, a logical priority about the arrangements, and logic has nothing to do with time.

It is terribly important to appreciate that some things remain obscure to the bitter end.

The whole picture is complicated by the stockists and merchants who will try to exploit any shortages that may appear.
The result is this. The feedback information from the industry's environment consists, first and foremost, of a forward order load. Much of this "demand for steel" will be bogus.

The development of the Watt governor for steam engines, which adapted the power output of the engine automatically to the load by means of feedback, consolidated the first Industrial Revolution.

We have, over the centuries, devised a management structure for running things, whether firms or whole countries. This structure depends absolutely on the limitations of the human hand, eye, and brain. The discoveries of management cybernetics, coupled with the techniques of operational research and with the new technology of automation, make possible a new way of running things which is not so limited. Yet we insist on retaining the original structures and automating them. In so doing, we enshrine in steel, glass, and semiconductors those very limitations of hand, eye, and brain that the computer was invented precisely to transcend.

It is the concept of likelihood that a real understanding of probability resides, and we must learn how to measure it.

The problem with managing either a business or a prison by periodic rather than continuous inspection is that the "variables" are likely to be seriously out of control before the discrepancy is noted.