MBR: Steal Like an Artist

I decided I was going to read a book a week for a year, here's a quick review of this week's book.  You can see the ongoing list here.

Basic Info

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

Why I bought it

I was getting tired of reading business books and wanted to try something a little different; besides the public sector is probably due for a healthy dose of creativity.

How it connects to the Public Sector

No particular connection to the larger public service discourse to be honest (but I didn't expect much of one when I picked it up).

What I got out of reading it

I have mixed feelings about this book. I really appreciated the aesthetic and the simplicity of the book compared to some of the tomes I've been reading lately, but I'm not sure I walked away with a whole lot of new tangibles.

The most valuable part of the book for me was chapter 4: Use Your Hands. I've been thinking a lot lately about the need to step away from the screen more often (which is one of the reasons I'm trying to read more books) and Kleon drives the point home fairly well. The trick, Kleon says, is to divide your workflow into analogue and digital halves and proceed only to the digital side when the creative process is completed. I already move off the screen to do creative work (via my whiteboard), but I think I'm going to make the divide more explicit. I'm also planning on picking up a nice Moleskine notebook so I can move slightly away from my reliance on digital notes and use my hands more often.

In sum, Steal Like an Artist was the easy read I was looking for given the week I was having.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

Let me tell you a story

She impressed you. She was professional, articulate, quick to answer, but thoughtful and enthused. That's why you hired her.

You parade her around the office, introducing her to her new colleagues, welcoming her as the new addition to the family. It’s a flood of new faces. It’s a touch overwhelming but she's going through the motions anyway.

Eventually you arrive at her cubicle, give her her login credentials, suggest some reading, requisition her a blackberry, drop off some forms she needs to fill out and head back to your office.

She sits down, still smiling, and starts soaking in the atmosphere.

Atmosphere?

You take it for granted, but the atmosphere feels foreign to her. She just spent the last 7 years earning her Master's. She honed her skills in the noisy campus coffee house, armed with an iPhone tethered to her MacBook, surrounded by others doing the same.

Now she finds herself surrounded by drab grey walls, sitting in front of a desktop computer, and telephone with a cord attaching it to the wall.

A cord?

But it’s not just the antiquated nature of her technological surroundings that puzzles her; no, the discomfort is much, much deeper. It’s so quiet - eerily quiet. No one is arguing, in fact no one is even talking. She misses the conversations about the big ideas. The important conversations.

She listens in as you speak to one of her new colleagues in the cubicle next to her. She is confused by the language you invoke, replete with acronyms and jargon, but what she finds even more confusing is her new colleague's complete and utter deference to authority.

Did he just surrender?

The entire thing is unnerving.

Yet she tolerates it.

She's new, her head swirling with the pressure to be liked, to be seen as a good employee, to otherwise make a good impression with her new 'family'. Her faith, or perhaps more rightly her naiveté, leads her to believe that a larger context will materialize, that eventually her surroundings and her motions will seem less foreign to her.

She is right.

Over time, she slowly learns behaviors from her colleagues and adopts their vernacular. She stops asking so many questions, she goes through the motions, she stops feeling discomfort.

She stops feeling anything at all.

You pass by her in the hall, you smile widely, she mumbles something and keeps walking. You can't help but wonder what happened to that articulate, thoughtful and enthused person you hired six months ago.

The thought is fleeting, you are too busy to look into it now, you are on your way downstairs to the security desk, you have a new hire starting today.

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Ps - if you are looking to step up the open government conversation, I suggest clicking here.






Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect