#Art April 2

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Leadership lessons can come when we take time to create ART. Twice in the same day two weeks ago I read about creating ART. First it was my friend Dawn Whitley putting a plug in for me to consider enrolling in a Pottery Class at Robeson Community College. The second reference to ART came from a leadership article I read on a book called ART & Fear.

I had to decline the invite for the pottery class for now but got intrigued about the book about ART. There were several takeaways from the article that resonated with me. The book’s actual title is Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking and was written by two friends David Bayles and Ted Orland.

The first takeaway is a leadership lesson that I often had to remind many of my former higher education colleagues of from time to time. The lesson was understanding that sometimes a project is more about quantity then quality. Chasing perfection especially by a committee or in creating ART often results in an unintended outcome.

In the book the authors discuss a ceramics class where the university professor divided the class into two groups. Each group was going to have a different grading scale. One group would be graded solely on the weight of the ceramic pieces they produced. The more they produced the higher the grade. The second group would be graded on the overall quality of their best work. The course ran over 12 weeks. At the end of the class the professor brought in a panel of outside judges to grade overall quality of the submitted pieces.

A interesting thing happened at the end of those 12 weeks. The group focused on quantity dominated the pieces deemed best quality. How? The quantity group was churning out lots of pieces and were learning from their mistakes by doing. The quality group fretted over small details and didn’t produce many pieces. They epitomized “paralysis by analysis”. Sometimes the best way to produce great results is not to aim to produce great work but to start doing work.

I have not read the book but did look over several reviews. From those reviews I was able to capture some pretty good quotes

“to require perfection is to invite paralysis”

“Even talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and hard work.”

“When you act out of fear, your fears come true.“

Leadership lessons can come from creating ART. The key is you have to start not dream about perfection.