Your Second (and Most Important) Job

From Cabinet Maker to Cyber-Security Analyst, we each have the title on our business card. When asked what you do for a living at a cocktail party, the stock answer is your craft or profession. Lawyer, machine tool operator, insurance adjustor, or barista, we often identify with that primary title.

Yet in this highly competitive era, is doing the job itself enough, or is competency merely the ante to play?

The ones that seize the promotion, win the deal, delight the client, or make history also embrace a secondary role: artist. While not generally printed on their business cards, the over-achievers among us take this job just as seriously as their issued title. Here, the work is to imagine the possibilities, tinker with new approaches, and push the creative boundaries of the work. It’s a refusal to accept things as they are and a willingness to defy outdated traditions.

An artist need not paint on canvas or sculpt with clay. Musical artists win Grammys, while journalistic artists win Pulitzer Prizes. We don’t need to shift job functions or companies to embrace our artist role; we can become customer service artists, sales artists, manufacturing artists, legal artists, accounting artists, or human resource artists. The addition of “artist” to your current title liberates your creativity, allowing you to craft new solutions rather than merely relying on old ones. It pushes you to inject your imagination into the daily work as opposed to just cranking out the ordinary tasks.

Through your new artistic lens, what changes need to be made to shift your work product from the garage sale to the Smithsonian? What little touch, creative flourish, or new possibility can you layer on top of the expected in order to elevate your efforts to masterpiece status?

Steve Jobs famously insisted the designers of the first Mac sign the inside of the computer case. When asked why, he said that “all artists sign their name to their works of art.” Let’s harness our creative abilities, and apply imagination and wonder to even the most mundane tasks. When we hold ourselves to Picasso-level standards, the art – and the work – makes history.

Let your art shine.

Read More

New Thinking for the New Era of Business

Albert Einstein famously noted, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them.” In our post-COVID world of ...

When an Astronaut Needs a Pen

Ever get stuck on a problem, only to realize you're solving for the wrong thing? That's exactly what happened when the rocket scientists at NASA ...

How Shake Shack Drives Innovation

Do you prefer the crispy mozzarella, tempura watercress, and black garlic mayonnaise cheeseburger or the pumpkin mustard, bacon, cranberries, and sage hot dog? For something ...

Lady Gaga’s Secret to Creativity

Just before she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, I watched Lady Gaga dazzle the live audience with a pitch perfect performance of ...

Creativity: Does Size Matter?

For some reason, we’ve been taught that for creativity and innovation to count they need to have a magnitude the size of the 1989 San ...

The Lexicon of Creativity

There’s more confusion around the meaning of the word innovation than the chaos at the airline ticket counter after a cancelled flight. Is there a difference between ...

The Brain Science of Becoming More Creative

When we hear stories about iconic leaders like Salesforce.com’s founder Marc Benioff, or widely celebrated virtuosos like Lin-Manuel Miranda for that matter, we immediately think ...

Correct the Overcorrect

When the misguided leaders at Enron, Tyco and Worldcom committed fraud and marred their shareholders with huge losses, the Securities and Exchange Commission rightfully swooped ...

Learning to Color

Fact: Creativity has become the most needed skill in business. It’s gone from a nice-to-have to becoming mission-critical. Fact: Creativity is a learnable skill. All humans have ...