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

- Karl E. Weick

Managers construct, rearrange, single out, and demolish many 'objective' features of their surroundings. When people act they unrandomize variables, …

- Karl E. Weick

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

- Karl E. Weick

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…

- Karl E. Weick

Rank and expertise do not necessarily coincide.

- Karl E. Weick

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

- Karl E. Weick

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 s…

- Karl E. Weick

Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter …

- Karl E. Weick

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

- Karl E. Weick