Confessions of a Business Artist

Braden Kelley is an innovation and change specialist, the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, an InnovationExcellence.com co-Founder, and is the creator of the Change Planning Toolkit™ and a book on the best practices and next practices of organizational change (January 2016 release).

  Career Development   Innovation  

I am an artist. There, I’ve said it. This statement may confuse some people who know me, and come as a shock to others.

“Braden, what do you mean you’re an artist? You’ve got an MBA from London Business School, you’ve led change programs for global organizations, helped companies build their innovation capabilities and cultures, are an expert in digital transformation and you can’t even draw a straight line without a ruler. What makes you think you’re an artist?”

Well, okay, that may all be true, but there are lots of different kinds of artists. I may not be a painter, a sculptor, a musician, an illustrator or even a singer, but I am an artist--a business artist.

What is a business artist, you ask?

A business artist sees through complexity to what matters most. A business artist loves working with PowerPoint and telling stories, often through keynote speeches and training facilitation, or through writing. A business artist loves to share, often doing so for the greater good (sometimes to their own financial detriment) in an effort to accelerate the knowledge, learning and creating new capabilities in others. A business artist is a builder, often creating new businesses, new websites and new thinking. A business artist is comfortable stepping into a number of different business contexts and bringing a different energy …

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