Everything has its own beauty,and to be more correctly,since we have the eyes of finding it,everything is sending out bright glory.We are always accustomed to appreciating and feeling the beauty of beautiful paintings,melodious melody or moving roles.However, we are not accustomed to doing the same thing from the smoothly-operated assembly line in the factory or from clients whose demands are satisfied.In fact,as long as you can observe carefully , beauty also contains to regular and functional activities.
How to ware clothes?How to write a memo?How to hold a party? How to design or publicise a product?We are showing the beauty in every aspect of our life.This experience of beauty shares the same way with showing our characteristics through skill demonstration at work,slide show we made or resume we composed.In the aspect of showing our essence,the artistic aspect of thing sends far more information than the fact.
The so-called sense of beauty means consumer's experience of style,structure and rhythm from a product .Those clothes retailors,such as Ralph Lauren and Gap,build the beauty of their brands carefully by respectively sending the taste of the rich and young who care little about money to middle-class consumers.And those airlines,such as Southwest Airlines,Ryanair and JetBlue, are of both ecnomic and artistic beauty -they are cheap, but they are also of infinite pleasure.And the beauty of IBM lies in the honored experience of clients -coorperating with a world-class seller who is not only of high reputation but also leading the science and technology.
No matter in the artist circle or business circle, sending beauty means satisfing the audience's subjective demand with creative way,in the process of which learning from competitors is needed.
The artistic flow in business circle are made of three processes:creation,verification and communication.In the process of creation, you should drive your inspiration properly.In the process of demonstration,you should practise diligently to let the outside know the best of you.In the process of communication,you should have the emotional exchange with your audience.These three stages,as a whole , are better to be treated as another way to find the real important thing at work than another managing style in business circle.If management is of both artistic flow and financial flow, the work from input to output would be simpler,more interesting and effective.
Driving your inspiration,improving your creativity.
Creativity is the ability to use one's imagination to create unique and novel ideas or things.Maybe you do think that the whole process of creation is hard to control, but that's not true.In fact, similar to fianancial flow,the process of creation also contains a series of predictable stages,therefore, it is also rational and predictable.
Driving inspiration effectively would improve people's creativity and enterprises' production.The following is the careful discussion of what should be noted in creation.
1.Having intuition.We may have the intuiton or instinct feeling on many things.Maybe intuition is something just indistinctly appeared in your mind ,but makes you observe the unusual point of a thing thus have a brand new idea of the environment.
In a journey,Howard Schultz noticed that coffee rooms spread all over the Europe.Unlike American ones,European coffee rooms provide far more than just ordinary coffee or non-caffeine
coffee-they also provide comfortable environment for customers to stay as they like.Many customers even pay a little extra fees to get this experience.When Schultz get back to Seattle,he put this intuition into Starbucks.
2.Being absorbed.As a painter, absorption means having a good command of all the colors on the palette,all the materials to use and the effect when they are put together.As a composer,absorption means learning the pronounciation and flaws of all musical instruments.As a ambitious manager,absorption means a good understanding of the core functions of an enterprise.It may take more time to practise in main departments in turns than been promoted directly,however,this process may make you more excellent.In family firms,young generation usually begins working in logistic department,and then to be engaged in sales, production and financial work.The best way to learn something is to do it by yourself.
3. Incubating ideas.The period after you start your work but before you finally see the light is the stage you screen, reorganize and sort out the ideas,and also the stage question why should you take such a long time to find out the truth.No matter you repeatedly revised a sentence for five times,or continuously failed to mix color, or being unable to make decisions for hesitation, or meeting again to discuss the plan of action,you wii always think that you are wasting time.In fact,like wine which is more fragrent by time, or timber should be airdried to make furniture,this is a necessary period in the process of creation. Artists have to chord line or test tone,machanics have to amend machines,and managers also have to ponder many things thorougly.The process of creation lies in every field,and this is also why oppertunity comes to those who prepared for it .
Take cooking for example,after taking all the would-be ingredients into consideration,the cooker would have a preliminary conceivability on what he wants to do. Then he begins to screen,stew and mix, and try the different flavor of ingredents.If everything is ok,at the moment he tastes,he would cry :"That's it !" In the whole process of creation, this is the stage been talked most but understood least,and as to the mind,this is the most artistic but least ecnomic stage,which also takes the least time.
When you are absorbed in work and concentrating on thinking,the inspiration comes suddenly.Sometimes you may predict it,but in most circumstances it just sneak into your mind unpredictably.
The reason for the establishment of Boston Coach, a provider of limousine service,is because Ned Johnson,CEO of Fidelity Investments,noticed that his fellow managers needed cars frequently.Fidelity Investments knows more about how to improve the usage of capital with information technology,and the company itself has enough demand to start car renting service,why shouldn't the company expand business in this field?
The most frequently appeared inspiration is the suddenly awakeness from what you have already done.You are happy and embarrassed,for you didn't realize it until you are awaken,and finally when you noticed ,the inspiration has gone.
4. Verifing ideas.Except you are Franz Schubert,the born genius never change any note,the process from idea to completion of it is not a simple line.A successful originality comes from repeated experiments and continuous exploration.Edison knew it clearly,no matter in the process of creation or implementation.One time,people asked him to talk about the last failed experiment,and he said he didn't fail but knew a new unuseful way. Implementing an idea can both prove its feasibility or unfeasibility ,that's contradictory ,right?
Practising diligently ang showing your talent.
Like excellet dancers, excellent leaders are very appeal in his every word and action.The moment they enter a house ,all attention would be paid to them.They are of king manner,and this glory makes people believe that their words should be listened and what they do must be very important.Before they say,their performance or communication with others begins.
It is not true to regard this ability as gift.In fact, this force,sreved only for the moment of showing the your best, comes from persistent practice.Excellent performance originated from diligent practice and the force cultivated by the practice.
Very few people practice deligently in business circle.Indeed, we have quite a lot of trainings ,such as going to university or business college or attending training courses.However,how long can we get a chance to practise those basic skills such as presentation,writing,negotiation,sales or instruction?This interval is usually very long.In such a world particularing about just-in-time and learning-by-doing,it is extremely rare for people to spend time practising basic skills regularly.
Sometimes you may see somebody preparing for something,but that is not a practice.Before visiting an important client,people would prepare a proposal and solutions of the counterview.Before making an important presentation, the manager would arrange the slides in sequence and check all the data,then rehearse it with monotonous and empety tone.In the dry run,they just pay attention to correct errors or adjust the height of microphone,but they neglect the tone,the impact,the choice of words and the whole quality of presentation.What they have done is making plan rather than practice ,which is a financial rather than artistic process.
The difference between successful and failed artist lies not only in talent but also in time spend on practice during their childhood and adulthood.Young ballet dancers have to spend three or four hours on dancing classes every day.They have to practise the basic movements repeatedly,such as strenching bodies and doing the pole training.Only by this, they can keep correct and elegant in the performance,for they have already been used to every movement,that is the so-called "muscle memory". Study proves that the real memory exists not only in mind,but also in muscle --in dancers' legs and musicians' fingers.
As to white-collar,"muscle memory" is only a symbolic saying,but its functions shouldn't be neglected.For example,when the just gratuated MBAs enter McKinsey & Company beginning their consultant careers, they have to receive a serise of training on how to compose introduction plans for solutions.The precondition of the training is that they've already known how to use slides,therefore,the aim of the training is to teach them on how to organize a introduction plan with strict structure,so that to make the plan more logical.To make the presentation smoother, every slide should have a complete narrative structure,including background description,event development and impact followed.Every slide should have a concrete title,for example, the title could be "Purchase--The Best Way to Increase" rather than "Three Ways to Increase".Because every consultant has received so much training and practice in the early stage of their consultant career,it is easier for them to rapidly write high quality introduction plans.
Pratice also means rehearsing the appointed repertoire repeatedly before the public performance.Even if the old tune,which is word-perfect in every member of the symphony orchestra,it should be rehearsed before the performance.Asking those concert performers why James Levine became such an great conductor,most of them would tell you that he paid great attention to the dry run,and spent a lot of time on it.This is also the main reason why Metropolitan Opera Orchestra owns a worldwide reputation.
Like artists,business people also attach importance to their performance. The only difference is that their performance is weighed by the accomplishment of main tasks.And the yardstick here is expressed by statistics,for example "The sales of the fourth season increased by 10%".
However,at least compared with artist circle ,business circle generally undervalues the other significance of performance--the process of performance.The process of performance is what makes people think that everything you do is very interesting and significant.People who finished listening a boring presentation all know that if the speaker knows how to mix the dramatic factors and personal appeal into presentation the effect will be far more better.
When you are showing the result of your work in a artistic way,you are presenting rather than throwing it it to the market .You should concentrate on your performance and use your personal appeal to turn your introduction plan into remarkable one .
Emotional communication and closely cooperation with clients.
As dancers,actors or musicians,they are either been encouraged by audience's enthusiasm, or feel desperate by audience's apathy.Namely,the audience can send back vigor to performers,nor don't they.So do customers.No matter in the artist circle or in the business circle,the process of creation is not a one-way street but the exchange of emotion .
Excellent salesmen always have many skills on communicating with clients.A sale point,such as excellent horsepower or competitive specification,which can persurade one person to buy a car,may not useful to those who like user-friendly car.And the sales techniques between impulsive buyers and price-sensitive buyers are also extremely different.If salesman knows what customer like or dislike,and adjust sales strategy timely,he may persuade customer to buy.Simply speaking,you should know customer's demand through listening.
No matter we are dealing with consumers,audience,crazy pursuers or end users,we could touch their hearts by our artistic acuity, which could help us to draw back the vigor from them.The miracle on the stage is created by both dancers and audience,and the emotional sympathetic response is also awaken
by both of them.
The chief actor of San Francisco Ballet once memoried one of his experiences.At a Tuesday night,he sensed an pasionate emotional flow between the audience and him,therefore,he performed more excellent.The next night,he performed even more vividly but got less enthusiasm,at least one third off,he thought that the audience had lost interest to him,and in order to pull them back he had to work harder.At weekend,he said:"I pondered over the whole process,and then realized that Wednesday night is the last additional performance of that set of tickets,and they only have two years to watch all seasons' performance.Therefore, audience in Tuesday night had longer time to watch performance,and they are more willing to comprehensive and feel.But what I sensed from the audience on Wednesday was a little hesitation,they didn't plough into the performance as me,but leisurely sit there as onlookers."
Another thing need to be listened is "silence".When the performer knows that he has become one with the audience,the following is a special silence,in which,without fugue state, you can even hear a needle dropping on the floor.A famous actor,Hume Cronyn,once said:" The most wonderful moment in the theater is when it becomes very silent.It is so silent that you can not even hear your breathe.This silence proves that you have seized the heart of your audience."
As to businessmen,the next step to listening is establishing a partnership.For example,the way for Meg Whitman to manage eBay is to let user communities decide their own strateges.When her clients told her that the payment system of eBay is worse than that of PayPal,she gave up her own system and bought this better one.
No matter in artist circle or business circle,the successful performers are all good at cooperating with clients to create nice experience with mutual effort.But the failure are not able to do that.Like the exchange between dancers and audience,if the cooperation is a success,equal ethusiasm would be given to each other between manufacturers and consumers.This right way could creat emotional exchange for both parties by turning the passive receivers into active participants.