From The Systems Bible, by John Gall:
There is a man in our neighborhood who is building a boat in his back yard. He knows very little of boat-building and still less of sailing or navigation. He works from plans drawn up by himself. Nevertheless”. he is demonstrably building a boat and can be called, in some real sense, a boatbuilder.
Now if you go down to Hampton Roads or any other great shipyard and look around for a ship-builder, you will be disappointed. You will find in abundance welders, carpenters, foremen, engineers, and many other specialists, but no ship-builders. True, the company executives may call themselves ship-builders, but if you observe them at their work, you will see that it really consists of writing contracts, planning budgets, and other administrative activities. Clearly, they are not in any concrete sense wilding ships. In cold fact, a SYSTEM is building ships, and the SYSTEM is the shipbuilder. In brief:
PEOPLE IN SYSTEMS DO NOT DO WHAT THE SYSTEM SAYS THEY ARE DOING.
Mmm, Peaches 