Bringing A Whole New Mind to Art

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I want to explore some ideas that are not directly related to online marketing of art. Chief among these ideas are those written about in the book A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink. Pink writes about how in an age where much of our left-brain business functionality can be automated, outsourced or is simply losing value, there needs to be an emphasis on creativity in business.

The book isn’t new. It was written five years ago and it’s been translated into more than 20 languages. Fast Company named it the best business book in 2005.

For a number of years I have engaged in on and off projects where companies have asked me to help them increase their creativity, improve their sales staff’s ability to present, or help their technical people interact better with their creative staff. I’ve always approached these situations by using the skills I have as an artist to solve the problems. More on that in a moment.

Leveraging Skills Artists Already Have

I haven’t heard or read much discussion  the Artist world about A Whole New Mind. The business world was up in a tizzy after it was written, and recently IBM concluded a survey that said the majority of CEO’s recognize that they need more creativity in the work place, but that they don’t think their companies are equipped to handle it. Dan Pink’s book directly addresses this need and breaks it down into six areas of study:

Design – the process of moving beyond functionality and incorporating aesthetics.

Story – what’s the narrative of your business?

Symphony – the ability to blend many pieces together to create something new.

Empathy – playing not just to logic, but also to feelings and intuition.

Play – humor and fun actually add value to the work place. Read about teaching an MBA to play at work.

Meaning – it’s not just about the product, but the why of the product.

Artists have a major opportunity in this new paradigm. These skills are the things that creative people are good at, and CEO’s of major corporations are stating that they need these skills.

If you are an enterprising artist who wants to figure out ways to increase your income in ways outside of simply making and selling art, I’m going to spend the next few blog posts talking about how we can help businesses understand that there are thousands of artists near them who can help them bring this kind of energy and creativity into their companies.

Of course, artists have to be willing to meet business half way. If they’re going to learn how to be more creative, then we’re going to have to learn to speak their language so that we can communicate clearly and help them get where they want to go.

image by jjjohn

Here’s the Vision

Imagine a life where you make the art that inspires you. You create and people like what you do, so they pay you for that art. In addition, companies come to you to help them add more meaning to what they do. Say it’s a law firm and they want to figure out how to differentiate themselves from all the other law firms in town. You teach them how to sit down and listen, how to tell stories, how to make people feel incredibly comfortable with a lawyer because that lawyer is fun. Does it sound impossible? It’s not.

I already know a lawyer who is fun, creative, and doesn’t come across like a stuffy lawyer at all – Alexis Martin Neely. She tapped into her creative self and her business exploded, despite the fact that everyone (read: other lawyers) told her that a law firm couldn’t be run that way.

In this scenario you got to help someone learn new skills and get paid well for it, you are still making art, and the people at the firm you helped are happy and transformed.

That’s my vision. I’ll be doing a series of blog posts about Dan Pink’s six key skills and how we can teach them to businesses. I’m doing them out of order though. The next blog post will be about my favorite: Play.

Tagged as: a whole new mind, business, Creative Consulting, creativity, dan pink