Favorite Quotes from A Failure of Nerve

Every now and then I buy a book and it gets lost on my bookshelf. When I eventually get to reading it a feeling of regret from not reading it immediately settles in. This was the case with A Failure of Nerve, by Edwin H. Friedman.

It is one of the best leadership books I've ever read. This is mostly because of its focus on non-anxious presence instead of things leaders should do. It's a being book, not a doing book.Here are some of quotes from it to whet your appetite.

The safest place for ships is in the harbor, but that’s not why ships were built. — Anonymous

In the search for solutions to any problem, questions are always more important than answers, because the way one frames the question, or the problem, predetermines the range of answers one can conceive in response.

Innovations are new answers to old questions; paradigm shifts reframe the question, change the information that is important, and generally eliminate previous dichotomies.

Many have pointed to the relationship between risk and imagination and observed that it is safer to confine one’s thoughts to the conventional. In the process of reorientation, however, the connection is far more fundamental. There is a relationship between risk and reality that involves not risk and one’s sense of reality, which is a psychological concept, but nerve and reality itself. If imagination involves risk, the willingness to risk is critical to validating one’s perceptions.

The great lesson here for all imaginatively gridlocked systems is that the acceptance and even cherishing of uncertainty is critical to keeping the human mind from voyaging into the delusion of omniscience. The willingness to encounter serendipity is the best antidote we have for the arrogance of thinking we know. Exposing oneself to chance is often the only way to provide the kind of mind-jarring experience of novelty that can make us realize that what we thought was reality was only a mirror of our minds. Related here is the necessity of preserving ambiguity in artistic expression since, if the viewer’s imagination is to flower, it is important not to solve the problem in advance.

Everything we enjoy as part of our advanced civilization, including the discovery, exploration, and development of our country, came about because previous generations made adventure more important than safety.

Imagination is more important than information. — Albert Einstein

Broadening that concept, it may be said unequivocally that whenever anyone is in extremis (whether it is a marital crisis, an economic crisis, a political crisis, or a health crisis), their chances of survival are far greater when their horizons are formed of projected images from their own imagination rather than being limited by what they can actually see. Or, to reverse it, to the extent the horizons of individuals in extremis are limited to what they can actually see, their chances of survival are far less than if their horizons include projected images from their own imagination. Actually, even the thinking processes that lead one to assume that one’s life situation is in extremis are partially determined by the breadth of one’s horizons at the time—which, of course, correlates with one’s imaginative capacity and sense of adventure.

To be determined, decisive, and visionary—while keeping your wits about you—may be what it takes to reorient any marriage, family, organization, society, or civilization.

People cannot hear you unless they are moving toward you, which means that as long as you are in a pursuing or rescuing position, your message will never catch up, no matter how eloquently or repeatedly you articulate your ideas.

You can’t rely on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. — Mark Twain