The real objective isn't just "knowledge" or getting an 80-20 understanding of the situation. The overriding objective is engagement, creating a buzz, mobilizing people to take action.

The inherent preferences of organizations are clarity, certainty and perfection. The inherent nature of human relationships involves ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection. How one honors, balances, and integrates the needs of both is the real trick of feedback.

The incremental approach to change is effective when what you want is more of what you've already got.

Discoveries from one community cannot be repackaged and provided to another as a silver bullet, That's a "best practice" rollout and it invariably evokes the immune rejection response.

Unintended consequences get to the heart of why you never really understand an adaptive problem until you have solved it. Problems morph and "solutions" often point to deeper problems. In social life, as in nature, we are walking on a trampoline. Every inroad reconfigures the environment we tread on.

Organizations are, in the last analysis, interactions among people.

Leadership is making happen what wouldn't happen anyway and this always entails working at the edge of what is acceptable