Rotman Management Spring 2010

I am not a businessman. I am an artist. -Warren Buffett WE EXPECT TO FIND ARTISTRY IN THE FINE ARTS, but in truth it escapes those boundaries on a regular basis. And while it is diΩicult to describe, most of us recognize it when we encounter it: we taste it in the dishes of a great chef; we see it in a star athlete’s performance; and we hear it in the words of an accomplished leader. It is no accident that people use the term ‘artist’ to refer to practitioners that are unusually adept at handling difficult situations. To paraphrase the late Donald Schön, author of The Reflective Practitioner, ‘the artistry of painters, sculptors, musicians and designers bears a strong family resemblance to that of extraordinary lawyers, physicians, managers and teachers’. Artistry can…

WE LIVE IN A WORLD THAT IS PREOCCUPIED with predictability and enraptured with quantitative analysis. In the realm of business, the evidence is clear: forecasters crank out precise predictions of economic growth using massive econometric models, and CEOs give to-the-penny guidance to capital markets on the next quarter’s predicted earnings. In the world of health care, geneticists sequence the human genome and predict the elimination of numerous diseases. In our day-to-day lives, we are governed by adages like “Show me the numbers” and “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count.” Where has this obsession gotten us? Not far, I would argue; the economists, for one, have gotten it consistently wrong. As late as the middle of 2008, none of the world’s leading macroeconomists or forecasting organizations were predicting that the…

It has been said that the artistry of painters, musicians and designers bears a strong resemblance to the artistry of extraordinary managers, lawyers and physicians. Do you agree? Absolutely. The similarity between them has to do with the nature of the elements that people must attend to in creating anything. For example, if you’re a lawyer and you’re putting together a legal brief, you have to pay attention to its composition, to the nature of the language being employed, and to the texture of the argument. Importantly, each of these elements is qualitative rather than quantitative in nature, which indicates that there is artistic thinking going on. A key element of artistry is the ability to experience ‘qualitative relationships’. Please describe this ability. The world can be said to consist of that which…

WHETHER WE WORK IN A HOSPITAL, a bank or a consulting firm, we all face problems that run the gamut from the simple to the complex. Simple problems are comfortingly clear: we know where we have to go and how to get there. Such problems often come with a set of instructions, so that anyone following them can arrive at the same solution. The steps involved are relatively few; the diΩiculty level, relatively low. Most managers would agree that fewer and fewer of today’s problems qualify as ‘simple’. The complex problems we face nowadays go by many names: ‘social messes’, ‘wicked problems’ and ‘big hairy problems’; I like to call them ‘enigmatic problems’. As the definitions of ‘ends’ (where to go) and ‘means’ (how to get there) become more ambiguous and…

SLOWLY BUT SURELY, MODERN MANAGERS ARE realizing that the complex situations they face cannot be approached in a routine manner. Indeed, the quest for creative solutions has become pervasive. Until now, the term ‘creativity’ in the business arena has mostly applied to the use of specific techniques such as brainstorming. While such techniques can help open people up to new ideas, they are limited in their ability to help us optimize the creative potential in our midst. If creativity is to truly add value to an organization, its managers must first understand its core principles. In this article we will attempt to define those principles and highlight the critical role that imagination, inspiration and intuition have to play in modern business. Creativity = Capital Artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) dedicated his career to understanding…

Karen Christensen: You have said that, “As business becomes more dependent on knowledge to create value, work becomes more like art.” Please explain. Robert Austin: Modern managers increasingly work in the realm of knowledge and ideas. Whether you are designing a new product or running a business in volatile conditions, the journey involves exploration, improvisation and adjustment, and in many cases, you can’t know your destination in advance. With this kind of work, time spent planning is better spent actually doing – trying things that you haven’t thought out in detail and quickly incorporating what you learn into your next attempt. This is what artists do, and as a result, knowledge work can and often should be structured as artists structure their work. KC: What does it mean to work ‘artfully’? RA: Whenever…