It takes an artist to paint a picture

This last year I had the fortune to meet author Anjali Sachdeva, who in 2018 debuted an extraordinary collection of short stories in her book, "All the names they used for God." As much as we all want to ask Anjali about her process, I found that reading her biography was enough to glean some insight. Anjali has lived a full and robust life. She has travelled and lived around the world. She has spent years working with other writers to hone her skills. She is an active reader. She cares not just about the craft of story making, but she has made choices and pursued goals to live a remarkable life from which she can reflect and draw upon.  Her stories come from her, and she has thus invented herself from the bits and pieces of the world so as to create those stories. 

We can do this in business too.

In the last year, I was working with a team to design, build, and deploy custom software for a government office. Like most engagements, it started off with a request for a mobile app, but through engaging in a deep research and design process with robust client engagement - much more happened. 

We never built a mobile app, because after digging into the problem, it was obvious that the problem was just as much about the organization as anything else. We couldn't just say that though - rather, I made a point to travel widely across the country, meeting the people and spending time with them to understand the problems. I made sure we documented these engagements, presenting our work to the client, taking them on the journey too.

We made some software, but better, we delivered and approach and an architecture for change, working closely with the client to lead them on a journey of self discovery and unlocking a range of interventions. The outcome was profound. 

Higher levels of leadership began to discover that they had an internal vision for how their organization could work, leveraging modern technologies and values, to create faster and more effective outputs. The business grew and the work expanded.

And here is the thing I realized:

Leaders often know what they want, but sometimes they need a guide to help them articulate it to everyone else. Especially in a government agency. Federal hiring practices tend to hire the same kinds of people, with the same kinds of background, over and over again. They need someone with sufficient outsider status, but insider language, to help break open the organization and paint the sky a new color.

On another occasion, I once crafted a service blueprint of an entire organization to identify where and how our cloud software will function to change the company. Upon presenting the image, the COO boldly spoke aloud to say, "for the first time, it's like everyone in the room can see everything in my head."

Day after day, this man had been trying to communicate this organizational design to his staff, and yet we managed to achieve it within a matter of minutes. This is not a poor reflection on the COO, but rather demonstrates the challenge to create and live a great story. 

We are not really taught in school or in many career fields how to tell a story. We are instructed on how to relay information with clarity. As children we might be asked to write a story, but rarely have teachers taught how to create one. When you learn to paint, you learn about color, form, and must look at paintings - over and over again. Painters are taught more than technique and materials, but learn about the legacy and personalities of painting. They learn the biographies of painters and trade stories about profound, world changing exhibitions. They learn to create a different world.  

We who make software, algorithms, robots and cars - the hard tackle of 21st century industrialism - could learn much from those artists and writers.