ABSTRACT
Polanyi wrote about two kinds of complementary awareness. First, the senses provide input from the world. The eyes see color. The ears hear sounds. These are the objects of what Polanyi calls focal awareness. They constitute the particulars of direct experience. Second, rudimentary grasp of the earth's rotation, the refraction of light. These are the objects of what Polanyi calls a subsidiary awareness. The "leader-centric" approaches to leadership tended to overlook these aspects, like trying to understand a motorcar by concentrating all of the attention on the dashboard. In The Antagonists, which is a novel by Ernest K. Gann, Hebrew rebels are holding a mountaintop fortress against a Roman legion. As part of their siege, the Romans build an immense ramp to bring a battering ram up to the wooden gates on high and start pounding. The chapter and its immediate successors are trying to restrict themselves to a very narrow "focal point".
