Direction Quotes (4)
If I make a decision it is a possession. I take pride in it, I tend to defend it and not listen to those who question it. If I make sense, then this is more dynamic, and I listen and I can change it. A decision is something you polish. Sensemaking is a direction for the next period.
Personal communication (13 Jun 1995). In Karl E. Weick, 'The Experience of Theorizing: Sensemaking as Topic and Resource'. Quoted in Ken G. Smith (ed.) and Michael A. Hitt (ed), Great Minds in Management: the Theory of Process Development (2005), 398. Weick writes that Gleason explains how leadership needs 'sensemaking rather than decision making.' As a highly skilled wildland firefighter he would make sense of an unfolding fire, giving directives that are open to revision at any time, so they can be self-correcting, responsive, with a transparent rationale. By contrast, decision making eats up valuable time with polishing the decision to get it 'right' and defending it, and also encourages blind spots.
See also: | Change (40) | Decision (4) | Defend (5) | Polish (2) | Possession (5) | Pride (2) | Question (45) | Sense (32)
It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving; and also every man may draw comfort from Lessing's fine saying, that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.
From 'E=mc2', in Science Illustrated (Apr 1946). In Albert Einstein, The Einstein Reader (2006), 99.
See also: | Comfort (6) | Possession (5) | Precious (2) | French Saying (30) | Search (10) | Strive (3) | Truth (241)
Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise–even in their own field.
In The Roving Mind (1983), 116.
[To] mechanical progress there is apparently no end: for as in the past so in the future, each step in any direction will remove limits and bring in past barriers which have till then blocked the way in other directions; and so what for the time may appear to be a visible or practical limit will turn out to be but a bend in the road.
Opening address to the Mechanical Science Section, Meeting of the British Association, Manchester. In Nature (15 Sep 1887), 36, 475.
See also: | Barrier (4) | Block (2) | End (5) | Future (29) | Limit (8) | Past (8) | Practical (10) | Progress (117) | Remove (4) | Road (2) | Step (4)
