“It is that well-developed, tentatively used intuition is actually the best tool for the job; while the apparent solidarity of a rational, strategic plan offers nothing more than a comforting illusion.”

“A good deal of corporate planning . . . . is like a ritual rain-dance. It has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it thinks it does. . . . Moreover, much of the advice related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.”
Prof. Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

“Not only does inflexible attachment to a plan (which it has taken a lot of time, effort and money to create) make a company unresponsive; such plans, Mintzberg shows, tend to be based solely on those considerations that can be clearly articulated and – preferably – quantified: ‘hard data’. They therefore fail to take into account precisely that marginal information – impressions, details, hunches, ‘telling incidents’ and so on – which provide the vital ‘straws in the wind’ on which prescient decisions can be based – and on which intuitions thrives. Because consciousness demands information that is tidy and unequivocal, it can never be as richly informed as intuition.”

“…’the articulate sceptic’ (cf. ‘the articulate incompetent), whose cleverness manifests itself as a reflex need to show how bright he is by criticising whatever anyone else has proposed. As Edward de Bono has pointed out: ‘The crucial use of intelligence is always more immediately satisfying than the constructive use. To prove someone else wrong gives you instant achievement and superiority. To agree makes you seem superfluous and a sycophant. To put forward an idea puts you at the mercy of those on whom you depend for evaluation of the idea.’ It may be safer. . . to be seen to be reactive rather than proactive – to respond to a present problem, rather than to take a fresh look at a situation and reconceptualise what the problems are. Being generative, which is creative and intuitive, is bound to be riskier than being evaluative.”

“One of the major threats to innovation is a sense of job insecurity and lack of safety at work. . . . Where individuals are threatened they are likely to react defensively and unimaginatively. . . . They will tend to stick to tried and tested routines rather than attempt new ways of dealing with their environments . . . . People [are] generally more likely to take risks and try out new ways of doing things in circumstances where they feel relatively safe from threat as a consequence.”
Quoted from ‘Fostering Innovation’, British Psychological Society.

“Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul, when hot for certainties in this our life.”
George Meredith

All references above are from the very interesting book ‘Hare, Brain, Tortoise Mind’ by Guy Claxton pg. 210-213