"If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow"
About this Quote
Crosby’s line is built like a paradox and aimed like a warning: the only dependable plan is one that assumes it will be wrong. By doubling down on the word “certain,” he turns a corporate cliche about “change” into something more bracing - a reminder that stability is mostly a comforting fiction we sell ourselves while drafting budgets, org charts, and five-year roadmaps.
The subtext is less philosophical than managerial. Crosby, famous for quality-management thinking, is telling executives that planning isn’t the problem; planning as if the environment will politely hold still is. “The world we are planning for today” is a quiet indictment of boardroom nostalgia: the belief that tomorrow will reward yesterday’s logic if we just optimize hard enough. He’s also smuggling in a critique of control. Institutions love the idea of mastery - metrics, forecasts, best practices - and Crosby punctures that posture with a simple point: your model of reality expires faster than your ink dries.
Context matters: Crosby wrote in an era when American industry was being forced to confront global competition, rising expectations, and the dawning sense that “quality” wasn’t a department, it was survival. The quote anticipates the modern economy’s permanent beta - technology cycles, shifting labor markets, brittle supply chains - but it’s not a call to panic. It’s a call to design organizations that can absorb surprise: feedback loops, humility, and systems that improve under pressure rather than snap. The rhetoric works because it flatters no one; it forces a choice between adaptability and irrelevance.
The subtext is less philosophical than managerial. Crosby, famous for quality-management thinking, is telling executives that planning isn’t the problem; planning as if the environment will politely hold still is. “The world we are planning for today” is a quiet indictment of boardroom nostalgia: the belief that tomorrow will reward yesterday’s logic if we just optimize hard enough. He’s also smuggling in a critique of control. Institutions love the idea of mastery - metrics, forecasts, best practices - and Crosby punctures that posture with a simple point: your model of reality expires faster than your ink dries.
Context matters: Crosby wrote in an era when American industry was being forced to confront global competition, rising expectations, and the dawning sense that “quality” wasn’t a department, it was survival. The quote anticipates the modern economy’s permanent beta - technology cycles, shifting labor markets, brittle supply chains - but it’s not a call to panic. It’s a call to design organizations that can absorb surprise: feedback loops, humility, and systems that improve under pressure rather than snap. The rhetoric works because it flatters no one; it forces a choice between adaptability and irrelevance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Change |
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