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ONEFundamentals of Action Inquiry

By “action inquiry,” we mean a kind of behavior that is simultaneously productive and self-assessing. Action inquiry is behavior that does several things at once. It listens into the developing situation. It accomplishes whatever tasks appear to have priority. And it invites a revisioning of the task (and of our own action!) if necessary. Action inquiry is always a timely discipline to exercise because its purpose is always in part to discover, whether coldly and precisely or warmly and stumblingly, what action is timely.

These sentences are easy enough to read and to write, and they make action inquiry seem obviously worthwhile. When don’t you want to act in a timely fashion? Yet action inquiry is also the ...

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