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Karl E. Weick Quotes

Simply pushing harder within the old boundaries will not do.

Simply pushing harder within the old boundaries will not do.

Karl E. Weick
Pushing Boundaries, Pushing, Boundaries
Attributed to Karl E. Weick in Subrah S. Iyar "Why Buy the Cow" (p. 21), 2007.

A small win is a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals. Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.

Karl E. Weick
Winning, Opportunity, Opponents

Your beliefs are cause maps that you impose on the world, after which you 'see' what you have already imposed.

Karl E. Weick
World, Maps, Causes

The real trick in highly reliable systems is somehow to achieve simultaneous centralization and decentralization.

Karl E. Weick
Real, Achieve, Centralization

Specifically, I would suggest that the effective organization is garrulous, clumsy, superstitious, hypocritical, monstrous, octopoid, wandering, and grouchy.

Karl E. Weick
Business, Organization, Hypocritical

Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger, more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts.

Karl E. Weick
Strong, Attitude, Attachment

Managers construct, rearrange, single out, and demolish many 'objective' features of their surroundings. When people act they unrandomize variables, insert vestiges of orderliness, and literally create their own constraints.

Karl E. Weick
People, Variables, Orderliness
"Social Psychology of Organizing". Book by Karl E. Weick, p. 243, 1979.

If people have multiple identities and deal with multiple realities, why should we expect them to be ontological purists?

Karl E. Weick
Reality, People, Identity
Karl E. Weick (1995). “Sensemaking in Organizations”, p.35, SAGE

Rank and expertise do not necessarily coincide.

Karl E. Weick
Expertise
Karl E. Weick (2012). “Making Sense of the Organization, Volume 2: The Impermanent Organization”, p.119, John Wiley & Sons

Being naive simply means that we reject received wisdom that something is a problem. We are always naive relative to some definition of the situation, and if we try to become less so, we may accept a definition that confines the definition of small wins to narrower issues than is necessary.

Karl E. Weick
Mean, Winning, Issues

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