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On Creative Accounting: Two Creativity Myths

Harvard Business Review

"Creative accounting" is really bad. For me, it evokes a wonderful old New Yorker cartoon by Robert Weber , where a small, meek accountant stands before the desk of an overfed chief executive exhorting the accountant to rescue the company: "It's up to you now, Miller. Except when it's good.

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Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations and Targets

Deming Institute

The reason that the organization failed is because the systems are producing what they will produce (along with the expected variation) not because an employee isn’t doing their part. The trouble is that we are usually dealing with complex systems (people and organizations) that may behave not at all like our myths would predict.

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