Creativity at Work Newsletter, June 2010
Newly published books and resources to help you be more creative:
What Poetry Brings to Business
By Clare Morgan, with Kirsten Lange and Ted Buswick
As the title suggests, this book explores the relationship between poetry and business thinking. Clare Morgan, the lead author, and director of the graduate creative writing programme at the University of Oxford, is masterful at bringing poems to life.
This is not a dry intellectual theoretical tome. The connection between poetry and business begins dramatically with a discussion about William Stafford’s, “Traveling in the Dark,” a poem about roadkill. What first seems like a simple straight forward scenario — a pregnant dear lies dying on the side of the road — becomes, under Morgan’s coaching, increasingly complex, and emotionally fraught.
Morgan takes us inside actual poetry workshops, to examine poetry, and ‘listen’ in on discussions amongst business managers from various industries, as they grapple with the complexities of poetry (and life). What would we do if we were in the same situation as the narrator in Stafford’s poem? What are the moral considerations? The poem becomes a catalyst for deeper levels of conversation that foster interpersonal understanding in work groups.
What does poetry bring to business?
“Creativity is a means of controlling chaos, finding order. Business and poetry draw their waters out of the same well.”—John Barr, President, Poetry Foundation
In an article about poetry in the boardroom, Morgan states:
A poem is a distillation of thought, experience, emotion into a tightly controlled form which utilizes words, images, sound and rhythm patterns to create a complex set of meanings that constantly form and re-form themselves. Its components take it beyond argument into a realm where expectations of single, analysable meaning are deliberately questioned and subverted. All art does this, but poems do it in a particularly condensed and therefore intensive way. A poem is a puzzle with multiple, inexhaustible, co-existent – and interchangeable – ‘solutions’, each more or less dependent on the others for validity. This means that the desire for closure, which drives most business considerations, the desire for pursuing the shortest route between A and B, another dominant mode in business thinking – won’t get you anywhere at all when you’re faced with a poem. (Journal of Business Strategy Volume: 26 Issue: 1, 2005)
Clare Morgan and her coauthors, expand on these notions in What Poetry Bring to Business. The skills necessary to talk and think about poetry, to think beyond fact, through metaphor and imagination, can be of significant benefit to leaders and managers who are contending with complexity in a changing world of finite resources.
I am fascinated by the discussions about poetry in this book because I have experienced parallels and applications in the visual art forms I use as a facilitator and coach. The arts invite us into deeper and more meaningful conversations that are crucial to leadership and strategy.
What Poetry Bring to Business is not only a comprehensive treatise on metadisciplinary learning through poetry, it also makes a significant contribution to the field of arts-based learning in business and society. Buy What Poetry Brings to Business on Amazon
The Creative Edge Workbook
By Wayne Morris
The workbook is designed to help people reclaim their imagination and creativity. ?It captures principles and practices from a wide variety of authors so you get a distillation of the best thinking in one book.
- learn what creativity is? learn about the ways you are already creative [and expand them]
- learn how to make your life more creative
- learn how to identify and strengthen aspects of your creative character
- learn what creative people do [habits] that makes them creative
- learn how you can expand your creativity by applying the six habits of creative people to your life
- do practical activities to grow your creativity
- do it all in your own time and at your own pace.
Transformational Speaking: If you want to change the world, tell a better story
By Gail Larsen
I recently bought this book based on testimonials from people I know, and the promise of the title: “If you want to change the world, tell a better story.” Larsen’s approach reminds me of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way — a workbook that helped me find my calling.
Larsen offers a practical framework for transformational speaking, based in part on Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and she asks excellent coaching questions aimed at liberating your true self to help you find your core message. I read some of the questions to friends, at dinner one night, which caused us to engage in a conversation which was both reflective and illuminating.
I plan to take time out for contemplation and reflection this summer, to go through the exercises, and learn to tell a better story. Available at Amazon.
Conquer CyberOverload: Get more done, boost your creativity and reduce stress
By Joanne Cantor
Why is cyber-overload such a problem? Cantor explains why the internet is so addictive, why some of the feats that technology is asking us to perform, are so difficult; and how our brains work, based on the latest in brain research.
Her first rule in conquering cyber overload is to stop multi-tasking. According to the latest research in brain science, we can only put our attention on one thing at a time.
Multi-tasking, is really rapid task-switching. Not only does it take longer to keep task-switching, it’s exhausting for your brain. By focusing on one thing at a time, you will accomplish more with less energy.
Conquer CyberOverload is an easy read, designed for short attention spans, and full of practical tips to help you get more done with less stress, so you can have time and energy for creativity. Available at Amazon
Joanne Cantor, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita and Director, Center for Communication Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison You can read her latest blog in Psychology Today on Conquering Cyber Overload
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