Don't move away, move toward ...

From George Siemens on his blog Connectivism, something that an advisor had told him in his youth:

"... never move away from something - you never know where you’ll end up…always walk toward something - this ensures you end up where you want to be."

Thinking back on my different careers, that would have been good advice early on. More than once have I found myself, or seen others, changing things without a clear idea of where we were headed, often without a clear understanding of the dynamics of whatever we were changing. Matters often ended up in a mess, if not in a disaster. Post-Apartheid South Africa would make an excellent case study in this regard.