Innovation, Collaboration, Learning & Leadership
A leader sees greatness in other people. You can’t be much of a leader if all you see is yourself. Only equals make friends. A man or woman who sees other people as whole and prepared and accords them respect and the same rights has arranged his or her own allies
The magic of social collaboration is when you become part of a conversation, then others bring their insights. After the last two posts, this has become poetry week (or so it seems).
Two Quick Reads
My last two posts discovered two further good reads on the power of poetry:
Deeper Reading
For anyone who wants to dive deeper into this topic, I can recommend:
Action
Lastly, go to your favourite bookstore and buy a book of poetry. There is no better way to realise the power than to dip into the inspiration of a collection of great poems.
One book can make a difference. My journey into the power of poetry began when a good friend, Geoff Higgins, gave me a copy of Seamus Heaney’s The Haw Lantern. Geoff did me an enormous favour because great poetry is a passion that can sustain a life of creative work.
You could do worse than to decide to follow this practice by the wise Lois Kelly:
@simongterry I read a poem first thing every morning. My version of morning prayer.
— Lois Kelly (@LoisKelly)
A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. – Salman Rushdie
The moment of change is the only poem – Adrienne Rich
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood – TS Eliot
Poetry is pure knowledge work. Poets take their art, sensibilities, training and deep domain expertise to create a work of pure knowledge, a piece of literature.
We accept that a poet might use elements of the following processes to create their work:
Poetry in this way is an example of knowledge work’s pursuit of effectiveness, over efficiency. The best poems are the result of distilling human experience, creating a leap forward in capability and dazzling in their rich human value.
As much as we may joke about a roomful of monkeys with typewriters writing Shakespeare, we know it cannot happen. Yet many organisations seek to manage knowledge work as a monkey business, concerned solely with the efficiency of the process of knowledge production. This mindset rejects the potential of the elements above and seeks to apply industrial process management to knowledge work. An example is the concern that collaboration in organisations might be wasteful or time consuming. That concern misses the engaging and creative potential of collaboration.
There is much knowledge work that can be improved. Even poets quest for better more impactful creation. However, they focus of their improvement is increasing the value of the output and not reducing waste in the process.
We can minimise down time. We can reduce errors and waste in the process. We can turn the process of knowledge creation into an algorithm. But like poetry created by monkeys, we must acknowledge that the great human potential for connection, emotion, creativity and innovation has been lost in that process.
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history – Plato
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth – Samuel Johnson
Always be a poet, even in prose – Charles Baudelaire
The National Department of Poetry – another brilliant (tragi)comic by Grant Snider. Pair with James Dickey on how to enjoy poetry and Coleridge on what poetry is, and Edward Hirsch on how to read a poem.
Great poetry references
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.John Donne
I could go on this way.
One thing is common in all of these patterns: the individuals in the organisation have ceased to take inputs from their external environment. The organisation has become an echo chamber for business as usual views and any inconsistent information is discounted.
The problem is easily rectified: engage people in the accountabilities of the real world –
No organisation can survive as an island. An organisation that opens up to even the smallest amount of genuine engagement with its community discovers new insights. This immersion and engagement will also drive to embrace new accountabilities for change.
Nobody can be an island. We all need to be engaged in our communities. Listening and engaging in the world outside the organisation is the surest first step to avoid the toll of disruption’s bell.
For to be social is to be forgiving – Robert Frost
People will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did,
But people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper
W.B. Yeats
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Jorge Luis Borges