9Qs Resources for Q8

9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work Resources for Question 8: Being a Maker

9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work Resources for Question 8: Being a Maker by Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle Copyright © 2021 Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle. All rights reserved. Tri Cosain books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales pro- motional use. Online editions are available. For more information, contact: Scott: [email protected] Gerald: [email protected] Designer: Hammad Khalid, www.HMDpublishing.com www.tricosain.com





Contents Introduction 3 Quotations 7 Exercises for exploring Question 7 15 Heroes and artists 17 What is my art, after all? 19 Lost art 23 Resistance 25 To ship or not to ship 27 Sources and references 29 Sketches, observations and notes 30



Introduction This volume provides resources to explore the eighth question of nine in our curatorial book, 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work. In our daily lives, at work and at play, with colleagues and loved ones, we all have the ability to make elegant and beautiful \"things.\" The \"things\" we make might be phys- ical objects or they might be intangibles: systems, soft- ware, products, services, communities, organisations, experiences, works of literature, works of art, perfor- mances. Whatever we \"make\", we have the opportunity to make it useful, beautiful, elegant and meaningful. Each in our own ways, we have the opportunity to do our work so as to beautifully express our personal magic, our own personal \"art.\" How different is this conception of work from simply going through the motions, following the rules, “doing our jobs,” doing what others expect or have command- ed. We suggest that one lovely dimension of personal and organisational leadership is the ability to see ourselves as \"makers\" and to encourage and invite others to see themselves that way, to live and work that way. This volume offers some quotations that have inspired us to be \"makers.\" More quotations and sources are avail- able in the book. 3



7 How might we become \"makers\" - people who regularly create beau- tiful and useful things and experi- ences? How can leaders step into becoming “makers\"- creators of beautiful, elegant objects, systems, products, ser- vices, communities, organizations, experiences - works of \"art\"... or at times \"unmakers\" transforming previous \"creations\" into more natural, sustainable, humane or el- egant forms. How can we step into life and work as a form of creative expression and service, inspired by an ethos of design - and support and encourage others to do the same? 5



Quotations The drawing is also a reminder that there’s an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on. - Steven Pressfield Artful Making. This term was introduced to the software world by Lee Devin and Rob Austin in the book Artful Making. Devin, a theatre director, and Austin, a business professor, proposed that for any team to be successful in a creative and improvisational space … four qualities are re- quired. They name these as: release, collaboration, ensem- ble, and play. This suggests the idea that a team needs to be given freedom for its members to interact, so that a col- laborative environment is fostered, leading to ensemble, where both the thing being created and the team itself are larger and more interesting than any one person’s input: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For this to happen, a spirit of play needs to be encouraged, risks need to be taken, failure embraced as a learning opportunity— and team members learn to take the product or business goals seriously, rather than themselves! - Tobias Mayer 7

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. An artist is some- one who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally. - Seth Godin This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do lan- guage. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art. - Toni Morrison If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand meetings. - IDEO.org Something is elegant if it is unusually simple and surpris- ingly powerful. - Matthew E. May We interrogate the world by making. - Bill Burnett 8

If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness! - Pablo Picasso Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels. - Allen Ginsberg Writing is ... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black sym- bols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is ab- sorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment. - Mary Gaitskill Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than ap- pears on the paper. - Isaac Bashevis Singer Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. - Edward Hopper 9

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ rela- tionship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience. - Ursula K. Le Guin Design isn’t just how it looks. It’s how it works. - Steve Jobs The designer has a passion for doing something that fits somebody’s needs, but that is not just a simple fix. The designer has a dream that goes beyond what exists, rath- er than fixing what exists. The designer wants to create a solution that fits in a deeper situational or social sense. - David E. Kelley Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple. - Charles Mingus I did not think of language as the means to self-descrip- tion. I thought of it as the door — a thousand opening doors! — past myself. I thought of it as the means to no- tice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power. I saw what skill was needed, and persistence — how one must bend one’s spine, like a hoop, over the page — the long labor. I saw the difference between doing nothing, 10

or doing a little, and the redemptive act of true effort. Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances — a passion for work. I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, bet- ter than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the nee- dle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shape- ly heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe — that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life. - Mary Oliver Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essen- tial to the work of art or poem. - Rollo May 11

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their pos- ture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony. - Paulo Coelho Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don’t do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. - Steven Pressfield, 12

Design isn’t just about making things beautiful, it’s about making things work beautifully. - Roger Martin One always finds that the most obvious, the simplest, the clearest conclusion has not been drawn except by a very small fraction of the practitioners. One always finds that the obvious is not seen at all. Perhaps this is simply say- ing that we never see the obvious as long as we take it for granted. - Peter Drucker There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost ... It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. - Martha Graham Make good art. - Neil Gaiman 13



Exercises for exploring Question 7 15



Heroes and artists Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. An artist is some- one who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it per- sonally. - Seth Godin Consider the people you personally admire, perhaps members of your “heroes list” if you have one. What do you think was their “art” - their unique contribution, their gift to the world? What was required for them to bring their art to life? Please be invited to record your observations and in- sights in your journal and to share and exchange insights with trusted friends and colleagues. 17

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What is my art, after all? There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost ... It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. - Martha Graham Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don’t do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself,. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. 19

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and ev- ery being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. - Steven Pressfield. Make good art - Neil Gaiman What do you consider your own “art”? What can you bring to the world that no one else can bring? From your unique experience and your unique inspiration? Please be invited to record your observations and in- sights in your journal and to share and exchange insights with trusted friends and colleagues. 20

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Lost art If someone is unclear about what their “art” is, what might we do about that? Where might you look for inspi- ration? If you had one or a few clues to what you might like to offer the world, how might you explore and refine them? Please be invited to record your observations and in- sights in your journal and to share and exchange insights with trusted friends and colleagues. 23

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Resistance Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the un- lived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. - Steven Pressfield What in your experience typically stands in the way of people giving their gifts to the full? People you know and admire? In your own case? What might we do to overcome the barriers and obstacles? Please be invited to record your observations and in- sights in your journal and to share and exchange insights with trusted friends and colleagues. 25

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To ship or not to ship Real artists ship. - Seth Godin What meaning do you make of this quotation from Seth Godin? What is the importance and impact of getting your work, your contribution, out into the world. What difference does this make? Please be invited to record your observations and in- sights in your journal and to share and exchange insights with trusted friends and colleagues. 27

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Sources and references May, In Search of Elegance Martin, Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage Udall, Riding the Creative Rollercoaster Godin, What To Do When It’s Your Turn Brown, Change by Design Burnett and Evans, Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You Pressfield, The War of Art Cameron, The Artist’s Way 29

Sketches, observations and notes 30