Reclaim Your Ability To Think For Yourself
Good morning everyone
A few years ago, the executive team I was part of was asked to participate in a leadership development process with an external agency.
Always curious, I went along for the ride. Amid generally positive feedback was the comment that I was too ‘literary’ for the boardroom context. A compliment I felt. It wasn’t intended to be.
It was strange feedback to receive. At that point I had been in and out of board meetings for the better part of 15 years and, for goodness sake, I was a media executive – surely being literary might be construed as an advantage? Apparently not, at least in that moment.
Fast forward to this week, when PWC’s strategy+business newsletter landed bearing the subject line “How fiction can help us imagine the future.” I am sure that you won’t begrudge me a moment of smugness.
Okay, it’s a bit more than a moment because that provided the springboard for this week’s letter. Here we go…
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/ Strategy
The PWC piece is an excerpt from Harvard University lecturer, Vikram Mansharami’s book, THINK FOR YOURSELF: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence
Of course, Mansharami’s point is not new.
Fifteen years ago, psychoanalyst and author, Thomas Moore wrote that literature, “expands the imagination rather than reduces it”. He said, “…we live in a world charmed by studies filled with numbers and charts, and machines full of blinking lights and a steady hum. We reduce most of life to factual and technical language and feel satisfied with talk of genes and DNA. In this environment, imagination, wit, and humor seem soft and nonessential.”
Nevertheless, let’s stick with the guy who carries the imprimatur of the Harvard Business Review Press.
Mansharami says this, “As we face unprecedented levels of uncertainty in our personal and professional lives, we have to learn to embrace it and develop the skills to navigate through it. In an age in which we outsource so much of our thinking to algorithms, big data, and experts, it is vital that we reclaim the ability to think for ourselves. And in this regard, it’s worth looking to the work of people who imagine the future”.
He argues that the virtue of fiction, both in film and in literature, is that “by forcing us to think about radical scenarios, they’re expanding our imaginations about what our future might look like.”
So, as you look at the challenges your organisation confronts, think about the themes, and ask your local bookstore to recommend a contemporary author that deals with it.
Or even more novel, go into your local library and ask the same. Author Neil Gaiman wrote, “Google can bring you back, you know, a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.”
/ Self
Two years ago, The New Yorker added The Archive Edition to its annual schedule. Going back into its archives, the editors construct a retrospective. This year’s version is entitled “Voices of American Dissent.”
In it, they have republished Ghosts in the House, which takes you on a journey through the Toni Morrison’s genius.
Morrison’s first book, ‘The Bluest Eye’, was published when she was thirty-nine years old. It’s an important reminder that not even Toni Morrison was always THE TONI MORRISON. It was only in her forties that she started to enjoy success as an author. In a world peopled by tech billionaires amplified by social media halls-of-mirrors it is easy to lose sight of the fact that success and meaning most often evolve over decades of application.
The journalist marvels at the number of roles that Morrison juggled. She responded, “I know it seems like a lot, but I really only do one thing. I read books. I teach books. I write books. I think about books. It’s one job.”
It’s an attribute I see time and again in people who successfully bridge multiple roles. They find a golden thread that holds it all together. They act intentionally into roles that are mutually reinforcing, that support and add momentum to the other parts, so that eventually the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
/ Soul
Ocean Vuong is a literary over-achiever. At 31 he has already racked up multiple awards for poetry and last year published his exquisite debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
In an early piece of writing, The Notebook Fragments, he reflects on his grandparents’ relationship – his grandfather, an American soldier, his grandmother, Vietnamese. He writes, “no bombs = no family = no me. Yikes!” And, in that one line, he reflects the complexity of life.
This Krista Tippet interview with him, was recommended to me by Phyllis Byars. Thank you, Phyllis.
It is worth taking forty minutes to listen to the conversation. I can’t begin to do it justice here.
Vuong says, “when you’re using language, you can use it to divide people and build walls, or you can turn it into something where we can see each other more clearly, as a bridge…We often tell our students, “The future’s in your hands.” But I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you want to live in first.”
There is so much in those few lines. How do you use language? Do you use it to build bridges? What do you say about yourself and others? What world do you create for yourself in the words that you choose?
He speaks of how we don’t truly pause to listen, “the great loss is that we can move through our whole lives, picking up phones and talking to our most beloveds, and yet, still not know who they are. Our ‘how are you’ has failed us.”
I find that one of the most powerful questions I ask, is the one after I’ve received the response to the first ‘how are you’. I simply ask, ‘no, really, how are you?’ And then I listen.
I would love to know how you are. No, really, how are you? Let me know. I will respond.
Karl
PS: If you’d like to know more about my coaching practice, click here or email me and let’s make time to meet.
(This letter was first published on August 2 2020)