"Employ every economy consistent with thoroughness, accuracy and reliability"
About this Quote
A command like this is how a businessman turns thrift from a personality trait into an operating system. Arthur C. Nielsen isn’t romanticizing frugality; he’s disciplining it. “Employ” makes economy sound like a tool you deploy, not a virtue you perform. And the phrase “every economy” is deliberately aggressive: squeeze waste out of the process wherever it hides. Then comes the leash: “consistent with thoroughness, accuracy and reliability.” Cost-cutting is allowed, even encouraged, right up to the point where it threatens the product’s truth.
The subtext is a rebuke to two familiar corporate failure modes. One is penny-wise chaos: shaving expenses until the measurement collapses, the research gets sloppy, the numbers become decorative. The other is gold-plated bureaucracy: using “rigor” as an excuse for endless process, overstaffing, and perfectionism that never ships. Nielsen’s line draws a bright boundary around what matters and treats everything else as negotiable.
Context sharpens the intent. Nielsen built an empire on measuring audiences and markets - work where credibility is the whole business model. If your data can’t be trusted, you’re not “less accurate,” you’re irrelevant. So the quote reads like early quality management before it had a buzzword: standardize, verify, keep methods tight, and never confuse “expensive” with “valid.” It’s also a quietly moral stance: economize on comfort, not on honesty.
The subtext is a rebuke to two familiar corporate failure modes. One is penny-wise chaos: shaving expenses until the measurement collapses, the research gets sloppy, the numbers become decorative. The other is gold-plated bureaucracy: using “rigor” as an excuse for endless process, overstaffing, and perfectionism that never ships. Nielsen’s line draws a bright boundary around what matters and treats everything else as negotiable.
Context sharpens the intent. Nielsen built an empire on measuring audiences and markets - work where credibility is the whole business model. If your data can’t be trusted, you’re not “less accurate,” you’re irrelevant. So the quote reads like early quality management before it had a buzzword: standardize, verify, keep methods tight, and never confuse “expensive” with “valid.” It’s also a quietly moral stance: economize on comfort, not on honesty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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