Everyone an Artist

 

Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States said, "Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."

I couldn't agree more. Regardless of the type of work we do, working on a project team and solving problems is a "creative effort" and if everyone could be "artists," organizationally we would accomplish more, produce greater value and work with happy colleagues who would be excited about what they did and motivated to contribute.

What do I mean when I suggest that everyone should be an artist?

Seth Godin, in his book Linchpin, suggests, "You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best ways to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a giant system."

Although empowering everyone on a project team to become an artist (or to lead), may sound counter-intuitive, it's really the way to make the entire team indispensable, and consistently successful. Hopefully, the members of a project team are there because they bring needed and important skills to the endeavor—and a command-and-control approach minimizes the contribution of any particular team member and hampers success.

When I suggest that everyone on the team should be a leader, Godin asks (and answers) the question of what that really means:

"What does it take to lead?" asks Godin. "The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn't been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that's exactly the wrong approach."

The world has changed, and the way we lead teams (and organizations for that matter) also needs to change. The days of command-and-control leadership approaches have gone the way of the dodo. Roosevelt also said, "Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are" I think that applies to how we approach projects and lead teams.

"The truth is found when men are free to pursue it," said Roosevelt. When everyone on a project team is empowered to be an artist, organizations will truly be able to accomplish great things.