Our ability to solve problem is limited by our conception of what is feasible.
No problem stays solved in a dynamic environment.
Art inspires, produces an unwillingness to settle for what we have and a desire for something better. It is the product and producer of creative activity, change; it is essential for continuous development.
Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.
The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.
A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.
The lower the rank of managers, the more they know about fewer things. The higher the rank of managers, the less they know about many things.
Nothing is harder to topple than a fact that supports a deeply held prejudice denied by its holder.
Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.
The future is better dealt with using assumptions than forecasts.
Creativity is the ability to identify self-imposed constraints, remove them, and explore the consequences of their removal.
So much time is currently spent in worrying about the future that the present is allowed to go to hell.
The objective of education is learning, not teaching.
It is the satisfaction we derive from ‘going there’ in contrast to the satisfaction derived from ‘getting there.’ Recreation provides ‘the pause that refreshes.’ It recreates creators.
Unless people can express themselves well in ordinary English, they don’t know what they are talking about.
Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.
All through school, we are shown that making a mistake is a bad thing, something for which we are downgraded. This reveals how little conventional schools are interested in learning, because we never learn by doing something right; we already know how to do it. Doing it right does confirm what we already know, and this has some value, but it contributes nothing to learning. We.
Exams do not assess anything significant to the future of children, because no one knows how to assess or measure the key factors to the future success of any person, child or adult. They are a closed system; tests exist for their own sake. They measure the ability of the entire school community – children, parents, teachers, administrators – to focus all their efforts on producing good results on tests! Nothing more, nothing less. To.
You rarely improve an organisation as a whole by improving the performance of one or more of its parts.
The result is a book that cannot be read easily. It requires study. We hope that some will have the patience and inclination to do so.