Just Do Your Job

By Aaron Hurst on February 19, 2009 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On the subway to work each day it seems that at least one woman in my car is reading Eat, Pray, Love.  It was published eight years ago and yet is still the literary accessory for women in New York. Frankly, I am tired of seeing it and am a little annoyed in general with books or magazines that are read 99% of the time by people of a single gender.

The other night I got sick of watching the infinite loop on CNN and FoxNews and decided to see if Ted.com might be a new source of evening entertainment for when I'm under house arrest making sure nothing burns while my children sleep.

On the site they offer images of speakers who you can click on to hear them give a short talk.  Some of the faces are recognizable, like Bill Gates, but most are not typical household names or faces (at least, not in my household).

I first watched one about "Shiftables", which was exactly what I expected from Ted.  Some engineer was showing off a new technology that we'll likely see for purchase in some form in a couple years.  The crowd--largely gadget lovers and technology groupies--ate it up.  Perhaps it's better than CNN but still not really my cup of tea.

I decided to give it another chance and picked a second face, which I selected using my stereotypes about people by guessing it would not be a tech demonstration.  I clicked on the face of a middle-aged, blonde woman named Elizabeth Gilbert that Ted.com marketed as being a talk on creative genius.

Within a few seconds she shared that she was the author of Eat, Pray, Love, and I sighed.  0-2.  MIT techie and now US Weekly-esque writer.

I love it when my assumptions are wrong.  Her talk turned out to be really interesting and thought-provoking.

Here is the summary in bullets:

• She wrote a wildly successful book

• She realizes that her "greatest success" is now likely behind her

• She sees the torment that many creative professionals have who are faced wrestling with the creative process and then the notion of success related to their creative output

• She looked for better models from history and found that prior to the Renaissance, genius was seen as being channeled into people from other sources and the "author" was only a vehicle to create the output
  

• She likes this model and shows how many artists and writers talk about hearing voices or other out-of-body forces that provide them with inspiration

• She suggests that we should go back to seeing everyone as vehicles rather than sources of genius and not project so much glory/failure on mere mortals

• She suggests that we all "just do our jobs". Sometimes we will channel genius and other times we won't, but since it isn't up to us, all that can be said is that we did our job.

It is a nice notion.  Certainly makes the creative process less stressful if you don't own the result.  That should open the door for more people to pursue creative careers and activities.

My creative outlet is designing and building organizations and programs.  It is an interesting notion to apply to my creative craft. Currently, our work is judged rationally by being based on metrics. We are accountable to outputs like budgets and client impact.

What if we used Elizabeth's paranormal model for assessing performance? What would it mean to be an effective manager? How would we design an annual goal-setting and performance-review process?

Reading between the lines in her talk, I would assume that we would structure the goals, assessment and coaching of someone based on three key variables:

1. Did they create opportunities to be touched by genius?
2. Did they listen to that force/voice and capture it or just let it float by them?
3. Did they do their job and effectively channel genius to enable others to experience it as well?

Now, "genius" doesn't need to manifest as a novel, song or even new program design.  In my experience, any action can either be inspired or it can originate from our inner robot.  The latter is our model for operating on auto-pilot, when we rely on rational thought and known solutions to deal with similar challenges or opportunities.

We all do at least some of our work in auto-pilot mode. It would be too exhausting to work solely in a mode of inspiration. I fear, however, that many people spend 99% of their work hours on autopilot. This too is an exhausting routine because of its repetitiveness, but is also even worse because it is career-limiting and -deadening.

I end this post wondering how we can use pro bono service to break up the routine of a career and challenge professionals to be open and available for the moments of genius that will inspire their creativity.  Can pro bono service provide an opportunity for people to turn off their robot and to open up to changing their assumptions and approaching challenges in new ways?  Can it help us all find the genius that is trying to get in?