A Word on Words; 2634; Mark Bryan

building you know i don't see you know once again welcome to word on words i guess more brian welcome to our own words the artist's way and we're riding the dragon the artist's way at work the artist's way now if i think about artists i think about creativity which is what you want me to think about it on the artist's way it work is not it is not a message i think so much the artist as it is far corporate executives business entrepreneur who is you've taken the work of the artist at the artist and written the book flap oh show's we applied to corporate workers that are necessary for john what happened for us as i develop the original artist way would julia cameron and she's a great to have their teacher

and also artist and that's borne of her thirty years of experience more most proud of the original artist's way is that it built its word of mouth and built a million copy of readership completely word of mouth phenomenon bestseller get help one person they bought seven for friends and that is very gratifying for a summit about five years ago after teaching for several years together we began to develop a set of tools for the work world because so many people were saying that the region are swayed both help them and left questions unanswered for their workaday world and so we honed in on that specific area of our lives and i think it's about working and living our entire life as if it was a masterpiece and i think the artists way at work specifically geared to having us wyden our vision of what we're doing and taking a larger community not only are ourselves are reflecting on what we're doing and why in and how we can do it better class or corporations our communities

and in fact the world at large and this time there is a third quarters of the third author dr hughes this turn you into the business sector direct why did the why did you go and kathryn now catherine had called us we were living in santa fe and she was one of the students who was already a pc or as a shill behavior had taught at georgetown george washington and she was a highly placed executive at one of the major banks in america and had been a corporate in fighter for old minnie number a number of years in particular is a woman executives helped lift the glass ceiling or twenty thirty year career for many other women executives so when she calls we want to collaborate with her because she had an in depth experience of the corporate persona if you will that myself was an aunt of an orange really as an artist really didn't have and it broadened our view and widened it so that we can do a lot of extra work along the world of group dynamics and at first say that you are lonely are

trained but that year a harvard trained entrepreneurial psychologist i guess an entrepreneurial psychologist to be a great way to put it i'd never phrase it that way john but for a couple reasons one have invented new products and i know it's like to make a million dollars on a little bitty idea pull from nothing you know just an idea to have one day nelson was like to lose everything in overseas building a new product in a foreign world and i learned the brutal lesson between marketing and production you know you could sell a lot of things but building them and delivering them on time in inequality that people can use is on the other side of the coin the proverbial marketing production a coin so in a sense we all bring an extra interest into our world in this particular book miami on to i know where katherine certainly the corporate and julie is as always the artist and the person that is that the heart of our teaching always ours to be laid let me see if i've got it down and that they're up there on the recommendations here forum for a twelve

week ban and yes that suggestion is that you pace the congo the book over twelve weeks right none the transformation right that you will be more creative thinking that you will be a better entrepreneur and that one point leo should be no human being that's right cause we have to look at how we make meaning in our world as a whole there's a lot of people have been very successful financially or even successful as far as famous concerned but when they haven't got a balanced life they're not going to be a very contaminated or very society friendly individual and we've always phrase their work over twelve weeks because when join our first teaching together it seemed like a group that we were teaching the process to would be what we call cooked at about anywhere between weeks ten and fourteen this is a decade ago sweden's long time now and julie as far back

as nineteen seventy eight so really we've framed a twelve week set aside on twelve weeks as a way to do this and none of the new research which is around now that says that if you can inculcate new habits are really established change with an organization and more personally but you need coaching and feedback for sort of a minimum of twelve weeks or so and i think that that's been intuitively are our rule and it's continuing to be borne out so yes it's nine transformations nine dragons as we'd organize them over twelve week period then each transformation each county government backed the dragon take issue a progressive step beyond or less transformation had the lead un and reduces to an abyss when they knew there was a way to survive a bit right now you said that isn't funny you say at one point that there are moments when you're vulnerable their periods when you're vulnerable and during those periods you should avoid the following day compared people who say yourself

movement people who make you feel guilty yes people who ask are you ok in that way and that special voice yeah and people led us to cast a yes and now ah certain period for sure will make you feel guilty when i make you feel guilty if i told you that i found and the artist was a grocer and they have a confidence that the ninth transformation part one is to be found on page two twenty six ryan the ninth transformation part two is to be found on page two fifty you know this and yes that the transformations lead the captions for rivers on one of the war that hasn't

as you know because you know it was very organic you know i learned that there's a great exercise in there call the trust mistrust by rope by iran laid on the book and i had an editor i'm tony sharon was a great editor chosen to purchases before we march and she and paul for darker the publisher at the time and had faith in our work but i was running late and we were running late city mostly for research i was doing in the group dynamic for the group dynamics section of the book and i had the choice to tell toni which is something we all come up against it is rough like tell toni i'm running late maybe threaten the you know the next payment of art by a royal dr howard we were gonna work and i am at endured her wrath or do i wait to the last minute in a time

where i'm suddenly we can deal with this at the last minute not easy to do about it and because we were working on the dynamics of truth and candor and the importance of candor in our position to really help your position and gain its footing a call telling us attorney relate to mark rubio make this deadline a few weeks from now what do we do that's very hard for me to do and i think often is in the corporate setting where you're either gonna be threatened or embarrassed potentially buy the information you care but tony reacted the way most companies do when they hear but there's a problem candidly practically she took steps to clear her counter she came to cambridge and sat on my couch for a couple weeks and we work through some materials and organize the dragons and and and help push along and i was as late as i would have expected to be so in a way can i push them and then the printer although they got the information correctly reversed just the captions of the last two dragons the same dragon with nice dragon it is his use twice once a week eleven once a week twelve and the

essays that go along with each dragon are exactly the same but his party won its second to still as the caption celebs roland resting with authenticity year old ledge of authenticity pride and the two just river exactly and it makes absolutely no different the rebuilding having said that having try my best to turn your lesson against you but it's a joke it's a visitor it's a terrific thank you very much and i always talk about there's no way we can take our viewers and thirty minutes for nine festival formations in the week but there are i mean it's not just a book that it's not adjustable and thirteen well people find a way to more creative business and first life it seems to me that there's often not it its great font made by your eyes as building great fun i mean there is it's four quizzes and it's chock

full of pithy and meaningful quotations from lisbon from business leaders many people don't know at first what some of the things they said nobody every remembered henry ford for talking about the spiritual world i think that's exactly right and i mean you and the hero of stuff about the protocols in zion are they upset made but on the other hand you're getting what a creative entrepreneur henry ford was in an indian word then there are maybe a couple of dozen and i don't people use their first names and then you take us through their experiences there their real life triumphs and trauma of this and so when you come away with is a real sense of having around oh having been on the dragon's back as it emerged that

sort of i mean you see the way that it goes to a non translation we've always found that personal stories help our readers connect with them they identify they can understand what it's like as an essay called turning heartbreak into a career move and we all suffer heartbreaks anybody's been through high school a surfer suffer heartbreak either from your girlfriend or boyfriend or a trial and getting into the right college or college of all and so how do we term heartbreak into a career move into something or use the image in a positive way how we see when were the difference between being grandiose and wanting to start your own business or worse the right time and were the right person those the kinds of things we offer readers and just speaking of it in theoretical terms doesn't have the power but actually telling a true story drawn from our students has long term it lasts with us in a way that's more colloquial and bought none of our books are about theory and though there's a lot of empirical ground into the work as intimate that it might ease dialogue project and on lewis

thirty years in catherine's thirty years in our careers of toss a lot both academically and professionally but we want to make it a very practical step by step guide that someone can get the book and have fun with because i think that's one of the things we don't allow ourselves in america is the chance to reflect on what we're doing the chance to really question the deeper meanings of our lives and what and what we want out of them and one for our communities so the essays the secure enough to risk justice so important when you think about how the way the artist when you think about artistic creativity there's something about our culture that makes us not think business not think corporate america and even non think science nothing silent there there is that there's a cultural gap that seems to me between what the artist those men and an end so often we think as you say in the book we so often think of about

creativity as something that comes to lead it's you as a select group in and as you all say it's really a birthright ross i grew all that talk about that a lot of other things to make let that statement while in my judgment crew have crew can be runs against the grain of our culture was well we tend to think of creativity in terms of just the great artists even and about and critically in today's society has only the famous of the rough the artists which if it was fate of being a creative artist our success for us was about fame and money it would exclude gauguin van gogh emily dickinson walt whitman had to self publish leaves of grass when nobody would touch a carl sandburg and in the entrepreneurial world and geniuses like jay for stardom it nobody knows who he is he invented the magnetic memory i would have a computer on the planet without his work or doctor marker who invented the past your chemistry it became birth

control or the founders of them about x so i work for some the producers of electricity in the telephone that's their digital systems that are now part of everyone's daily life in the takeaway in the big cities and night as everywhere in our digital telephones being away all cellular phones those inventions have included on the wide breadth of the human spirit expressing itself in a number of areas and we've never distinguished and creativity between particular myself or catherine have never distinguished between the creativity of a great scientist or the great business person who we think the charge cards are or treasury bonds how we fund our company's efforts to keep our sources since restarting all these things are great inventions of the human spirit and that's we're trying to awaken in every context that we work in an often we feel i think the chicken in today's america shunted from our real self in the workplace we sort of feel like we have to leap are ourselves at home and take only a certain part to work and

that alienation from ourselves i believe discounts the value that we have is a hole being and we are going to have to remain creative to solve the coming problems and it stick to the vision i live in cambridge massachusetts an outside my door is this little tree with a fence around and says and industry july third nineteen so the seventeen seventy five a captain george washington took command of the continental army and for me as a patriot that says is a warm feeling we were expressing an idea and people are often in there and my worships deeply cynical executive will save you know it's an idea worth and also from i feel sad i know what would you do for democracy but i hear it in an easy smile of recognition and then go on to like really work with you know that everything around us this tie that wonderful tie you you wearing from the children's defense fund or at this furniture in the way it was made of the cameras that are

broadcasting our signal or on idea in someone's mind first and often idea that was an even appreciate it or was scorned any television insurance early days was thought i don't ever make it there were naysayers or they were the wright brothers trying to fly hampshire people thought they were out of their minds you know of just to pursue the official government is as i think of love love corporate structure it seems to me that there are their art to the polls of song that summer by their nature reject the artistic wave creativity and burst halt the ceo the bottom of arson at the top most often in the commercials as autocratic tough minded

i got here my way and most awful in both directly underneath are very much like me that's true then and won't tell me the truth you know that doesn't you know i hear an acoustic allowing hear it i'm happy with it and then there is a gap between the top and mid management and the low levels maybe the assembly line and there and there is a sort of drudgery about the work that argues against the acceptance that creativity is a birthright and it seems to me that the transformations seek to deal with those people by knocking off myths and both fans i agree with that john it's very well said i think there were so we can't we don't get rid of the leaders because it's not necessary to destroy the status quo to cause revolution we can get them to be to hear us

once we understand the rules of engagement if you will and the i do think that we ignore the the bottom line worker at the company's peril and that was even shown recently in their saturn's a tennessee company and you know they were talking to two senior management i know i know there's only from the press so i can read i can well at that time they were saying we should get a small rv four wheel drive us expand our line and nobody ever taught listen to them for whatever reasons and you know there's that that's been a very important market introduction for other companies and i think one of the reasons that the japanese carmakers made such a run on gm and the various the big three here is that they were listening to the bottom line worker the person right out there making seatbelts was making suggestions about how low seed bills might work more effectively and when i listened to you find that there's an inmate creativity in in the human condition and we're when we're awake no matter where we are in the chain we can we can become not only more productive and help the company would also be rewarded for that

and many of the chiefs' of these various large corporations were discussing we talk about the hierarchical system and working their way up have indeed work their way up and i was a former president of standard oil would start start pumping gas and seventeen an exxon station in indiana then went to chemical engineering school so he had a vision broader than just the job be half of what about crazy record grazing makers the great turn the julia coined twenty years ago and we use in the original artist's way and again enormous way to work crazy maker is someone that we all sort of have in our lives and some point it often can be for someone else i'm probably julius case and certainly one of my crazy record because we have a dialectic sometimes she speaks a metaphysical terms i speak in empirical ones in that miata become a and forges a new synthesis if you will which is important both of us can be aggravating and the definition of a crazy maker john is someone who has their own agenda is often very difficult to reach out to to

listen a crazy maker will break your schedule live always get some problem or the one you want to get something done and they're taking fifteen times the time to do it and there's often a variety of reasons for that but analyzing where we have crazy makers in our lives so that we are not being held hostage to their agenda even their unconscious agenda another crazy makers often very passive aggressive military will be there on time at one o'clock and you're waiting to one thirty and then they can rush in and they blame it on something else for the best way to not become a crazy maker anymore has to take responsibility and to do what we say so we do in a way that's completely reflective and my colleague at mit autor shermer says that reflection is the opposite of blame as long as i'm blaming somebody else has a very powerless position for me to be a sars we work is away in some in some small form twelve weeks wanted time to take power to join you where you are worthy of a senior level executive a corporation or someone who just

wishes to be who might be starting how do you become awake enough of the job to see new ways to invent new things to keep abreast and an optimistic about your abilities and your corporations abilities to help not only yourself but the team and also an eventual serve your community in new ways because as we get older as we get smarter it's not just about the money and it's not just about the corner office it becomes about the deeper sense of meaning that we make of our world and that has to happen communication with our with our neighbors and a commitment to some kind of an evolving community and stay safe and empowered i guess that's sort of the political side of what we do as a way to empower amidst the quizzes and i have to scratch feathers

out went through and so a question very embarrassing and crimea for that answer quite well and answer which i did think about examine the web is so and then there's another one or that doesn't want to exercise in there and a mercedes and all these aggrieved white fog settles announcer wilms yes and i felt that was a test of courage but now what you would say in what you would not say that as a test security a boston sampled arm and that's i think a diploma waited to make you understand the other is a time for candor time for discretion the talk about that a little bit the okay i think that were the most important things that happens in our lives is the way we communicate to others unfortunately were not often we are often telling the truth you know even to little things like honey like is your head

what you're thinking and our project on the line you know what are we gonna be on time in usa out of jordan about it when in fact you do have some problems revealing proms is not easy and this is a book that wants to build from a very safe perspective a new kind of candor for someone and in doing that the first thing we have to find out is what do i really think were often so inundated with other people's agendas the media's opinions about things that we don't even know what we really think about the new movie we just saw little on what someone said last summer about us enemy that we have to re frame on because the book are swayed work is meant to do three particular things to give us a former daily reflection to let us and let us discover and leverage our strengths and finally to re frame failures so that we can come to every new risk taking opportunity from a positive emotional stance so looking at in that sense of can do this on its first important that i say to myself at least admit to myself what would i say if i could say anything let

me take the the blinders offer a moment that i'm even have for myself let me see the truth as i can that see it now in all with what we're not saying what would i say and stars let me take small risks toward a better level of candor no no we don't want to wait to get in there a ceo's door and saying that sitting inside every fifty years are right here right now is probably not agree with the decisions better we start small and just admit to ourselves and then i worked this program with what we call a believing mirror a creative colleague either outside your car company or inside in a kind of quiet and our key done between the two of you talk about the metaphor of the dragon riding the dragon whelp i'm a wife of this book on an oriental metaphor because you know the art of war by sun tzu in the book of five rings are two very well

respected ancient samurai text that are used in some business schools in different places on what an oriental metaphor but haven't won the war metaphor because it's alive it's survival of the fittest it's much more about cooperation than it is about competition in the world teams families communities and really forged the world as we know it in a much different way than we know i mean even the wild west you know if we think of the wild west as a bunch of cowboys who went out there and carve a niche on it was families who settled the old west coming out in covered wagons and building building something of a community out of the forest that was