Harlan Cleveland Quotes & Sayings

For the problem of decision-making in our complicated world is not how to get the problem simple enough so that we can all understand it; the problem is how to get our thinking about the problem as complex as humanly possible
and thus approach (we can never match) the complexity of the real world around us. — Harlan Cleveland

Those with visible responsibility for leadership are nearly always too visible to take responsibility for change ... — Harlan Cleveland

Leaders are problem solvers by talent and temperament, and by choice. For them, the new information environment-undermining old means of control, opening up old closets of secrecy, reducing the relevance of ownership, early arrival, and location-should seem less a litany of problems than an agenda for action. Reaching for a way to describe the entrepreneurial energy of his fabled editor Harold Ross, James Thurber said 'He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.' That's the appropriate posture for a knowledge executive. — Harlan Cleveland

If you try too carefully to plan your life, the danger is that you will succeed-succeed in narrowing your options, closing off avenues of adventure that cannot now be imagined. — Harlan Cleveland