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Who really said it

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets

Not W. Edwards Deming — actually Paul Batalden, after Arthur Jones Paul Batalden Founding chair of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement · emeritus professor of pediatrics and health policy, Dartmouth
Disputed In copyright

Deming never wrote this sentence, and it appears nowhere in Wikiquote’s sourced Deming quotations ↗. By the account the Institute for Healthcare Improvement published on 21 August 2015 ↗, drawn from Paul Batalden and Earl Conway themselves, Batalden coined this “system” wording as a corollary to Arthur Jones’s line about organizations — Deming’s teaching shaped the thinking, but not this sentence.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets” not W. Edwards Deming. Paul Batalden coined this wording as a corollary to Arthur Jones's "All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get!", quoted in David P. Hanna, Designing Organizations for High Performance (Addison-Wesley, 1988), 36. Origin documented by Batalden and Conway, 2015 (PSQH, 3 Aug; repub. IHI, 21 Aug). Via quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to W. Edwards Deming. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Paul Batalden (the “system” wording); David P. Hanna and Addison-Wesley for the 1988 book that carries Arthur Jones’s original). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Paul Batalden — founding chair of the IHI board of directors. Theme: "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

This wording
Coined by Paul Batalden as a corollary for health professionals
Parent line
“All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get!” — Arthur Jones (Procter & Gamble, UK)
Parent line printed in
Designing Organizations for High Performance
That book
David P. Hanna (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988), p. 36 — the page IHI cites
First investigated
Susan Carr, “A Quotation with a Life of Its Own,” Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, July/August 2008
Origin documented
Batalden and Conway’s own account, 2015 — PSQH blog, 3 August; republished by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 21 August

“All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get!” — Arthur Jones, as David Hanna recorded him. And then the corollary, made for health professionals “less interested in ‘organizations’ than in ‘systems’”: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Origin, in the participants’ own account

Both wordings are quoted as IHI gives them, from the accounts of Paul Batalden and Earl Conway; the Jones line, exclamation mark and all, is cited there to page 36 of Hanna’s book. Deming’s name appears in that account only as an influence on the two men.

Book, 1988 — carries the parent line
Hanna, Designing Organizations for High Performance, at the Internet Archive
IHI: how the quotation actually came about

The chain of custody

  • Summer 2006 — the saying is in print in health care and in Batalden’s mouth, with no mention of Deming: in Doug McInnis’s article “What System?”, Dartmouth Medicine reports that Batalden “is fond of the saying” ↗. The article names no originator at all.
  • July/August 2008 — the first explicit credit, and the first investigation of the drift: in Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, editor Susan Carr calls the line “Dr. Paul Batalden’s observation” ↗ and runs a correction after IHI challenged a citation her magazine had printed crediting a 1984 book (Barry Clemson, Cybernetics: A New Management Tool). She finds it pinned in print on Berwick, on Deming, “occasionally, to Batalden,” and once on a David Beckwith, MD.
  • August 2015 — Batalden and Earl Conway publish the origin story themselves — on the PSQH blog on the 3rd, republished by IHI on the 21st: Batalden “created a corollary to the Jones words,” and Jones’s original ran “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get!” Read the post ↗
  • 2018 — the drift is still being acknowledged in the field: the Tower Foundation writes that the quote “is attributed to a range of people, including: Don Berwick, W. Edwards Deming, and Dr. Paul Batalden” ↗
  • Still absent from the record — no version of the line, and no quotation containing the words “perfectly designed,” appears on Wikiquote’s W. Edwards Deming page ↗, in its sourced sections or its misattributed one.
In copyright

There is no pre-1931 source for this line, so nothing here is public domain. The earliest printed form in the documented chain is Arthur Jones’s sentence in David P. Hanna’s Designing Organizations for High Performance (Addison-Wesley, 1988), and the “system” wording is Batalden’s later coinage — both modern and treated here as in copyright. Quoting a single aphorism with attribution is ordinary fair use; reproducing Hanna’s or Batalden’s surrounding text is not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Four names, one sentence

This is a quotation with a documented chain of custody — and the famous name at the end of it is the one that did not say it.

W. Edwards Deming no source

Deming (1900–1993) is the name on nearly every graphic and slide, but the sentence is not in his work. Wikiquote’s Deming page ↗ contains no quotation with the words “perfectly designed” anywhere on it. What IHI records is influence, not authorship: Deming’s theory of variation shaped how both Earl Conway and Paul Batalden thought about systems ↗.

Donald M. Berwick popularizer

Because the line became house language in health-care improvement, IHI’s co-founder often gets it too. The Tower Foundation, writing on system redesign, notes plainly that “this quote is attributed to a range of people, including: Don Berwick, W. Edwards Deming, and Dr. Paul Batalden” ↗.

Paul Batalden wrote this wording

IHI’s account is explicit: “Paul created a corollary to the Jones words: ‘Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets’ and has shared the words with many others” — the switch from organizations to systems made for health professionals. Read IHI’s account ↗.

Arthur Jones P&G, UK

Jones, a Procter & Gamble colleague of David Hanna’s, is quoted saying “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get!” — recorded by Hanna, per IHI, on page 36 of Designing Organizations for High Performance (Addison-Wesley, 1988) ↗. Earl Conway, who knew and worked with Hanna at P&G, brought the insight to the US Quality Council of the Conference Board, which he and Batalden co-chaired in the 1970s.

The idea is Deming-shaped; the sentence is Batalden’s, built on Arthur Jones’s — on the testimony of the two men who were there ↗.

Context

Why this line travels — and why it lands on Deming

It is the sentence people reach for when they want to say that a bad outcome was produced rather than merely suffered: not bad luck, not bad apples, but a system doing exactly what its design makes it do. That framing took hold first in health care. In the Summer 2006 issue of Dartmouth Medicine, Batalden is described as “fond of the saying” and glossing it himself: “If we keep doing what we have been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always gotten” ↗ — an argument for redesign over tinkering.

The reason Deming’s name sticks to it is that the thought really is Deming-shaped. IHI’s account notes that Deming’s theory of variation and his insistence on redesigning systems influenced both Earl Conway and Batalden, and Wikiquote’s sourced section does carry Deming’s genuine definition from The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993): “A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system” ↗. A line that sounds like a compression of that idea gets filed under its most famous exponent — which is how attribution usually goes wrong.

“If we keep doing what we have been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always gotten.” — Paul Batalden, quoted in Dartmouth Medicine, Summer 2006

Variant wordings, and what the drift tells you

Several forms circulate under Deming’s name — “…to get the result that it does,” “…to get the results that it gets” — and the unstable wording is itself evidence. Lines copied from a printed page tend to hold their shape; lines passed along in talks and slide decks drift, and this one drifted.

The other tell is the chain of credit. Arthur Jones said it of organizations; Batalden restated it for systems because, as IHI puts it, some health professionals were “less interested in ‘organizations’ than in ‘systems.’” Each retelling swapped a word and shed a name, until the last name standing was the most famous one in the room.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Change Leadership Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Like Magic? (“Every system is perfectly designed…”)ihi.org

The anchor source: IHI’s 21 August 2015 repost of Batalden’s and Conway’s own account of where the line came from, first published on the PSQH blog on 3 August 2015.
“A Quotation with a Life of Its Own” — PSQH, July/August 2008psqh.com

Susan Carr’s Editor’s Notebook — the column IHI’s post was written to add context to. The earliest explicit credit to Batalden, and the earliest map of the drift: a rival print citation (Clemson, 1984), a fourth claimed coiner (David Beckwith, MD), and Berwick and Deming as the usual guesses.
W. Edwards Deming — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Deming’s sourced quotations. The phrase “perfectly designed” appears nowhere on the page, in any section.
“What System?” — Dartmouth Medicine, Summer 2006dartmed.dartmouth.edu

Doug McInnis’s profile of Batalden’s microsystems work, with the “system” wording in print in 2006 — as a saying Batalden “is fond of,” not as one he wrote. It names no originator.
Designing Organizations for High Performance (1988)archive.org

David P. Hanna’s Addison-Wesley book — the volume IHI cites (p. 36) for Arthur Jones’s original line. Lending copy.
Paul Batalden, MD — The Dartmouth Institutegeiselmed.dartmouth.edu

Batalden’s faculty profile: emeritus professor at Dartmouth, IHI founder, guest professor at Jönköping.
W. Edwards Deming — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the man the line is usually pinned on (1900–1993), including his books Out of the Crisis and The New Economics.

The true originator of this wording

Who actually coined it

Paul Batalden

American pediatrician and health-care quality-improvement leader · founding chair of the IHI board of directors

Paul Batalden, MD, is a pediatrician by training who became one of the central figures in American health-care quality improvement: co-founder and founding chair of the board of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and an emeritus professor of pediatrics, community and family medicine, and health policy and clinical practice at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. Earlier he served as assistant surgeon general and director of the Bureau of Community Health Services, and he later founded the U.S. VA National Quality Scholars program and IHI’s Health Professions Educational Collaborative. He was directly influenced by W. Edwards Deming’s thinking about systems and variation — which is exactly why the line he coined is so often handed back to Deming.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Origin as documented by Batalden and Conway (2015)

Institute for Healthcare Improvement, “Like Magic? (‘Every system is perfectly designed…’),” IHI blog, August 21, 2015; originally published on the Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare blog, August 3, 2015 — Paul Batalden’s and Earl Conway’s own account of the phrase’s origin. Written in reply to Susan Carr, “Editor’s Notebook: A Quotation with a Life of Its Own,” Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, July/August 2008. Parent line quoted from Arthur Jones in David P. Hanna, Designing Organizations for High Performance (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988), 36.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/every-system-is-perfectly-designed-to-get-the-results-it/

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