Gary Klein > Quotes

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. —Albert Einstein”
― Gary Klein, The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work

“Intuition is the use of patterns they’ve already learned, whereas insight is the discovery of new patterns.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Biking is about rhythm and flow. It's the wind in you face and the challenge of hammering up along hill. It's the reward at the top and the thrill of a high-speed descent. Biking lets you come alive in both body and spirit. After awhile the bike disappears beneath you and you feel as if you're suspended in midair. ”
― Gary Klein

“We can increase insights by exposing ourselves to lots of different ideas that might help us form new connections.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“The more central the belief is to our thinking, the harder it is to give up. These core beliefs anchor our understanding. We use them to make sense of events, to inquire, and to arrive at judgments about other ideas. And so we are much more likely to explain away any anomalies rather than revise our beliefs in the face of them.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“The ancient Greeks worshipped the human capacity for insight. Scott Berkun, in examining the topic of innovation, pointed out that the Greek religious pantheon included nine goddesses who represented the creative spirit. Leading philosophers such as Socrates and Plato visited temples dedicated to these goddesses, these muses, who were a source of inspiration. We honor this tradition when we visit a museum, a “place of the muses,” and when we enjoy music, the “art of the muses”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The remarkable ways we gain INSIGHTS

“In many cases, the problem isn’t about having or noticing insights; it is about acting on them. The organization lacks the willpower to make changes.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“When we put too much energy into eliminating mistakes, we’re less likely to gain insights. Having insights is a different matter from preventing mistakes.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The remarkable ways we gain INSIGHTS

“Coincidences change our understanding, change what we notice, change what excites us, and set us on the path to making a discovery.
Coincidences can also change our actions. One way they do this is by giving us an idea of what we need to alter to break a pattern we don’t like”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Kuhn argued that most research is “normal science”—studies that add more detail to existing knowledge and theories. Normal science, however, usually suppresses the contradictions, the observations that don’t fit the frameworks that the scientific community shares. Over time these discrepancies grow into crises until someone comes along to propose a paradigm shift, a new way to understand natural forces, a new set of questions, a new way to search and research. Kuhn described these paradigm shifts as scientific revolutions. They require paradigm destruction—the shedding of the previous paradigm. The new paradigm changes how scientists understand phenomena. It changes what scientists see and how they act in designing experiments. Paradigm shifts count as insights because the result is a shift from a mediocre frame to one that provides a better understanding of the same phenomenon.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Insights change our desires; the new stories shift our goals, leading us to give up some ambitions and pursue others.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Curiosities provoke people to investigate further, just as coincidences do. The initial “What’s going on here?” reaction doesn’t contain the insight, but it starts the person on the road to gaining the insight.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“you don’t expect much, if you don’t inquire in a way that respects the intelligence of the other person, you probably won’t find many insights.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“they were demons about cost. They enjoyed finding a bargain and were proud of getting good quality at a low price. They took great satisfaction in not paying extra for fancy packaging or marketing gimmicks. They were committed to keeping the weekly shopping bill as low as possible.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Martin Chalfie is a perfect example of the experience most people have of “connecting the dots” and solving a problem by being exposed to more ideas. Like Chalfie, we get a new piece of information that combines with other information we already have, and, presto, we make a discovery.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Decision researchers were trying to reduce errors, which is important, but we also needed to help people gain expertise and make insightful decisions.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“I still observe executives exhibiting the same lack of courage or knowledge that undercut previous waves of innovation. They declare that they want more innovation but then ask, ‘Who else is doing it?’ They claim to seek new ideas but shoot down every one brought to them.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“To quote Mark Twain, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“On November 9, 1989, while CIA experts on Soviet and East German politics were briefing President George H. W. Bush on why the Berlin Wall was not likely to come down any time soon, a National Security Council staff member politely entered the Oval Office and urged the president to turn on his television set—to see both East and West Germans battering away at the Wall.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Insights shift us toward a new story, a new set of beliefs that are more accurate, more comprehensive, and more useful.
Our insights transform us in several ways. They change how we understand, act, see, feel, and desire. They change how we understand.They transform our thinking; our new story gives us a different viewpoint.
They change how we act.In some cases insights transform our abilities as well as our understanding”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Complex and unpredictable
The claims work best in well-ordered situations. Well-ordered domains are structured and stable. We know what causes the effects we want to achieve. We can think systematically about well-ordered domains because we know how they work. We can calculate what decisions to make and how to predict the future.
However, we don't usually live in that world of clarity. Much of the time we find ourselves in a different world-a world of shadows where we don't know all the causes or how they work, we can't pin down all the knowledge we need in order to be successful, and we aren't sure we understand the goals.”
― Gary Klein, Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making

“The reason, according to Fortune, was that Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. Too much energy was spent cutting defects to 3.4 per million, and not enough energy was expended developing new product ideas.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“The connection path is different from the desperation path or the contradiction path.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Many of Admiral Stark’s subordinates were so fixated on the idea that the navy battleships were protecting Pearl Harbor that they had trouble seeing the ships themselves as a Japanese target. The connection strategy is more than just connecting the dots. It involves changing the way we think.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Insight is the opposite of predictable. Insights are disruptive. They come without warning, take forms that are unexpected, and open up unimagined opportunities. Insights get in the way of progress reviews because they reshape tasks and even revise goals. They carry risks—unseen complications and pitfalls that can get you in trouble. So insights make you work harder. Are you prepared for this additional work? You already have so much to think about and track once your project is under way; you won’t have the mental space to anticipate all the implications of the insights that your team members bring you.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“Notice that creative desperation is more conscious and deliberate than spotting connections, coincidences, curiosities, and contradictions. People aren’t accidentally stumbling onto insights. They are actively searching for them. Another example”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

“conversations.”
― Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights