Repairing Ourselves.
“Everything that has a shape breaks”- Japanese Proverb
But…
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”- Ernest Hemingway
And…
“Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness” - Elizabeth Spelman
Paths to repair.
1.Poetry.
2.Water
3.Wabi-Sabi
4. Kintsugi
5. Gardens.
6. Untying
1. Poetry
Poems restores us to what is deepest in ourselves.
Poetry finds the perfect words in the perfect order.
CK Williams in his Pulitzer Prize winning collection “Repair” writes how
‘Self-doubt is almost our definition” as we move forward with the “hesitant music” of our lives
“If I can create myself, I’ll be able to amend myself.”
“Re-establishing myself in myself like this always comes to pass”.
He celebrates “Invisible mending”.
The minds procedures of forgiveness and repair.
The greatest poetry is written at the borders of what can be said. As this stanza on persevering and resurrecting and restoring oneself through the ups and downs of life while never losing your internal melody …
“Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream. Have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the groves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you”. Sheng-Yang
The photograph above is from an amazing oasis in Chicago is the Poetry Foundation library which holds the largest collection of poetry books in the United States. You can have the library on your phone by downloading the app from here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/mobile-app
You can access poems by topic, by mood, by author and much more and it is all free.
2. Water.
Moving water is often symbolic of power and life. It can reputedly heal the sick and the lame, restore youth, confer fertility, dissolve sin, and so on.
It is an alchemy of thermal simulation that leaves one clean and pure and reconciles mind and body.
Flowing water whether it be rainfall, a stream, a river, or the tides of a lake or ocean has a certain timelessness to its biological rhythms.
P Walton wrote in the philosophy of water:
The three key lessons that can be drawn from this are humility, harmony and openness.
Humility: water stays low in the river, yet it is a life-giving force.
Harmony: water does not fight against its surroundings, it works with them to find a course.
Openness: water is open to change: gas, liquid, solid. It adapts and alters its form accordingly.
3. Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things that is unconventional.
It is a philosophy of repair and therefore real life for it does not have perfection or ideal as a goal
Wabi refers to a way of life, a spiritual path, the inward, the subjective, a philosophical construct. It is about “space”.
Sabi refers to material objects, art, and literature, the outward the objective an aesthetic ideal, it is about “time”.
4. Kintsugi
Kintsugi is a Japanese repair technique that takes ceramic destruction and makes a broken object into a new entity. It leaves clear bold visible lines with the appearance of solid gold. A kintsugi repair speaks of individuality and uniqueness, fortitude and resilience, and the beauty to be found in survival. Kintsugi leads us to a respectful acceptance of hardship and aging.
Kintsugi has in it the Wabi-Sabi philosophy and its belief of beauty, knowledge and humanity arising from the scars and the repairs is sung by Leonard Cohen…
Ring the bells that can still ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…
And the philosopher Rumi…
“The wound is the place where the light enters you”
5. Gardens
In the Charlevoix region of Quebec there lies a private garden which covers more than 20 acres and is called Les Quatre Vents ( The Four Winds). It is considered amongst the finest private gardens in the world (it is opened a few times a year to the public).
The garden was created by one person, Francis Cabot, as his life work that blends creativity and passion and it is simply the most breathtaking places one can imagine.
Francis Cabot believed that gardens are like art and have the power to change you. And unlike other art, which may affect you differently over time, because you have changed over time, a garden is itself always changing. Francis designed his garden to lift the soul of people who walked through it. To help them grow and repair and heal.
He wanted us to come out different after the experience.
Here is a peek at Les Quatre Vents…
One prescription for the pressures and challenges we face is to take a walk in a garden.
Regardless, it is key to remind ourselves of Francis Cabot’s belief that every individual is creative and we have a garden within ourselves that we need to tend to so that we can heal, self-repair and always bloom…
6. Untying vs Cutting.
Sometimes we cause damage to ourselves and our relationships by making hasty decisions, or having litmus tests with which we judge an entire person based on a single opinion or act. In doing so we cut harshly, end abruptly, or shut down angrily.
If something has to end it is better to untie then to cut.
When we cut both sides of the string or rope get frayed but when we untie things both sides remain intact.
And in the gradualness of the act we may find that we did not want to untie in the first place or we leave things in such a way that they can be retied in the future.
Sometimes repair means not creating situations that need repair.
Grace.
The most updated and advanced versions of foundational AI models from Anthropic, Google and Microsoft, as well as a seasoned version of human intelligence (HI) were asked the same question about grace.
Query to OpenAi (GPT 4o): What does it mean to have grace?
Having grace often means embodying qualities of kindness, empathy, and composure, especially in challenging situations. It's about responding to people and circumstances with patience, understanding, and an open heart rather than reacting with anger or judgment. Grace can also mean carrying oneself with dignity and humility, even when you have reason to feel wronged or superior.
In interpersonal situations, grace might involve forgiving others, letting go of resentment, or acknowledging others' perspectives, even when they differ from your own. It’s about being resilient without becoming hardened, and compassionate without seeking anything in return. Grace is often thought of as a strength that is quiet, gentle, and profound.
Query to Claude (Sonnet 3.5) : What does it mean to have grace?
Grace can be viewed as having several interconnected dimensions. At its core, grace involves both internal qualities and how we interact with others.
In relating to others, grace manifests as showing kindness and understanding even when it may not be expected or "deserved." It's extending compassion to others in their moments of weakness or failure, and offering forgiveness rather than judgment. A graceful person might gently correct someone's mistake without making them feel small, or maintain their composure when treated poorly.
Internally, grace often means accepting imperfection - both in ourselves and in life's circumstances. It's about moving through difficulties with dignity and poise, not by being perfect, but by responding to challenges with patience and wisdom. This might mean accepting criticism constructively, acknowledging our mistakes without harsh self-judgment, or adapting to unexpected changes with flexibility.
Query to Gemini (Advanced with 1.5 Pro): What does it mean to have grace?
Having grace is a multifaceted concept with interpretations spanning social, theological, and personal realms. Here are a few key facets:
1. Undeserved Kindness
At its core, grace often refers to receiving something positive that you haven't necessarily earned. It's about kindness, forgiveness, and understanding offered without any expectation of repayment or reciprocity.
2. Divine Favor
In many religious traditions, grace is seen as a divine gift from a higher power. It's the unearned love and mercy bestowed upon humanity, often leading to salvation or spiritual enlightenment.
3. Elegant Movement
Grace can also describe physical movement that is smooth, balanced, and aesthetically pleasing. Think of a dancer, a gymnast, or even a gazelle – their movements exude a sense of effortless beauty and coordination.
4. Social Etiquette
In social contexts, grace involves behaving with politeness, tact, and consideration for others. It's about navigating social situations with ease, showing respect, and making others feel comfortable.
5. Handling Difficult Situations
Grace can also be demonstrated in how you respond to challenges and adversity. It's about maintaining your composure, dignity, and compassion even in the face of difficult circumstances.
Key Aspects of Grace:
Forgiveness: Letting go of resentment and offering understanding to those who have wronged you.
Humility: Recognizing your own limitations and acknowledging that you're not always right.
Empathy: Putting yourself in someone else's shoes and understanding their perspective.
Gratitude: Appreciating the good things in your life, both big and small.
Resilience: Bouncing back from setbacks and maintaining hope in difficult times.
Ultimately, having grace is about living with kindness, compassion, and a sense of balance in all aspects of your life. It's about extending understanding to yourself and others, navigating challenges with composure, and appreciating the beauty in everyday moments.
Query to Rishad (seasoned version); What does it mean to have grace?
Grace is a tapestry that interweaves:
Generosity. Humility. Empathy. Kindness. Elegance. Poise. Acceptance. Resilience.
To be a person of grace might be a goal and in some ways a quest more likely to lead to fulfillment than power, wealth or fame and its pursuit does not need power, wealth or fame to achieve.
And it may be rarer than power, wealth or fame.
A good life might be one where aims to be a person of grace.
On Technological Change: 3 Learnings.
Image using Midjourney using prompt “On technological change”
For four decades my career at Publicis Groupe has been deeply intertwined with technology, allowing me to observe its changes across several industries including the communications industry.
The communications business has always changed as technology shifted. The company was first a print-based business and then a print and broadcast business, with radio initially and then television dominating it. In the early ’90s with the advent of the internet, a team of us began some of the first digital marketing and digital media companies, and in the past three decades, the entire business of marketing, media, and communications has restructured itself around the internet. Wave after wave of technology, from search to e-commerce to social to mobile to now AI and Web3, have shifted every aspect of all businesses.
Having observed all of this firsthand, I’ve come to three conclusions that apply to all organizations experiencing this technological evolution.
1. Technology does not care about anybody’s business model or way of working.
Nearly fifteen years ago, I spoke to leaders at a major newspaper conference, imploring them to rethink their business in the light of search and mobile technology. I warned them that every aspect of their business model, from local monopolies and distribution routes to auto, classified, and other advertising, would disappear unless they embraced the internet, stopped thinking about their paper publication as central, embraced multimedia with continuous publishing, and attracted new talent. Essentially, I was suggesting that they rethink every aspect of their organization.
Most papers did not adapt, and the newspaper industry is a shell of its former self.
Just as technology rendered many newspapers obsolete, it’s having the same effect on a wide range of industries and functions today. Business models cannot be sacrosanct. “Adapt or die” is a good adage for an age of rapidly advancing technology.
2. Technology can be used as an accelerant, but its real power is often the capacity to reinvent.
Companies may invest deeply in technology to automate and upgrade their way of working, but they still fail.
This is because they often do not change their way of doing business.a
Procter & Gamble invested deeply in technology to automate its manufacturing plants and be a leader in digital marketing. They leveraged search and mobile and video to reach people as their habits changed.
But what technology really enabled was not just better ways to communicate but new ways to do business, giving rise to a range of competitors.
For instance, social media leveraged YouTube video’s cost effectiveness and ease of distribution. The advent of e-commerce made it possible to sell without Walmart or Walgreens, and companies like Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club were born and ate into Gillette’s market share, despite Gillette having a superior product, brand, distribution, and spending. The new media allowed for direct distribution, subscription services, word of mouth, and sampling, and customers recognized that the new blades were good enough but much cheaper and much more convenient.
Similarly in the age of AI it is not just increased efficiency (more for less) and greater effectiveness (higher impact) that companies should focus on but also existential risk and opportunities. Running your current business model more efficiently and effectively will not save you if others are using AI to rethink your business model.
Digital marketing reinvented the newspaper business versus making printing presses faster or truck delivery more effective.
The really smart firms are not just thinking about how to make their businesses more efficient or effective using new technology such as AI but have teams who are reimagining their businesses.
They behave as if they were beginning the firm again today with access to modern technology, new ways of working, changing demographics and new market places, but without any constraints except how best to satisfy changing customer needs and expectations in a world of new competition.
3. It is not the technology—it is the talent.
As technology is widely distributed it helps individuals as much as it does institutions, and every advance in technology places a premium on superior ability.
AI will be like electricity. Few companies differentiate on their use of electricity because all their competitors use electricity. Similarly when every company utilizes AI often accessed from the same firm it is highly unlikely that an AI strategy will differentiate the company.
In some cases it may be proprietary data but in every case it will likely be talent.
Remind yourself that the typewriter did not write A Farewell to Arms; Hemingway did. If I had a word processor and ChatGPT and Hemingway had a pen, he still would write better. Of course, if Hemingway also had ChatGPT, he would be that much better than me. Hemingway with a Substack would have scaled amazingly better than most.
As talented individuals do with TikTok.
Today, streaming and the internet make the popular courses on justice at Harvard and on happiness at Yale available to everybody for free. It’s not the technology that makes these courses great, but the talent of professors Michael Sandel and Laurie Santos, respectively.
From Rethinking Work which is at the printers and available for pre-order everywhere. More here: https://rishadtobaccowala.com/rethinking-work
Modern Leadership.
Image by Almosthumankreative using Midjourney.
We have entered an age of de-bossification.
In many industries, particularly “White-collar” ones, the era of “bosses” is in decline.
Less of a clamoring for bosses, managers, controllers, monitors, evaluators, and paper pushers.
This shift has been driven by changing demographics, the spread of technology, the rise of unbundled and distributed work, new behavior expectations, and a re-definition of what “work” is including the rise of fractionalized and free-agent talent who work for themselves or at multiple jobs and are expected to comprise most of the workforce in the US by the end of the decade.
There is a rise in the need for leaders, guides, coaches, mentors, role-models, creators, and builders.
Leaders matter like never before but what are the characteristics of such leaders and how do we build such skills?
A long time colleague Drew Ianni and myself were very fortunate in having one hundred leaders convene in New York over one and a half days to listen to each other and begin to work together on how to best to identify, craft, discuss and enhance modern leadership skills at the inaugural salon of The Athena Project.
Ten Insights to Modern Leadership.
Every one of us can be a leader since it is a way of being and behaving while a boss is a title and requires having people reporting to them.
Many bosses are great leaders but leaders do not need to be bosses.
Leaders focus on zones of influence versus fixating on zones of control.
Leaders build wide spectrum skills versus just being full-stack. They have wide and broad horizons.
In a world of change and connections the best leaders recognize that mastery of craft alone will not be enough to navigate the complexity of leadership.
Leaders have courage. If one goes with the flow or just follows the number there is really no need for the individual.
Trust is and always will be the key currency for leaders. Today only 10 percent of CEO’s trust their CMO’s.
The best leaders are always learning and growing but never grow up. They feed not just their mental operating systems but also their physical and emotional operating systems.
Leaders recognize that companies do not transform but people do and they need to transform themselves. But transformation is a process of transition and the best leaders are managing many transitions both of their firms, the people around them and themselves.
Today's leaders think of growth in many more ways than just growing their business or focusing only on their firms. Optionality is freedom. They want to grow their own influence whether it be writing, speaking, other boards and planing for a non company career. They wish to grow their own intelligence in many areas not just focussed on things like AI but also Private Equity, Cultural Trends to be impactful in a multitude of ways. Almost everyone is thinking about how to manage a portfolio career in a world that is in transition.
Transforming from boss/manager to leader/coach is possible for those wishing to try.
As times change the best managers adapt and learn and flex into new shapes and learn new skills.
This transformation requires three conditions:
First it requires today’s bosses to accept that to grow and remain relevant they will have to change and while it may be difficult it is better than becoming irrelevant.
It also requires their leaders to ensure that new incentive systems that are more about zones of influence, growth of craft and people versus zone of control of budgets and team size are put into place.
There is an urgent need for coaching and training and patience to help today’s managers become tomorrow’s leaders.
A personal hunger supported by new incentives and buttressed with training including the opportunity to self-learn is the formula.
Talent is short and many leaders are aware of this and planning accordingly.
They know that new brooms sweep clean but old brooms know the corners.
Becoming You.
While it is important to listen to and learn from other people and be aware of what they may think of us, we should not live in other peoples minds.
Worrying about how we will be perceived or how we compare and measure up to others is like handing over the remote control of our life to someone else.
The more we ask what will they think, how will we look, and let every driver of our success and decision making come from external perception and extrinsic measures rather than internal introspection and intrinsic measures , the more likely we end up not achieving our true potential or peace of mind.
Many of the people we admire go against the way they should behave and question the status quo.
Galileo questioned whether the earth was at the center of the Universe.
Picasso invented new forms like Cubism that collapsed and re-expressed the rules.
Steve Jobs asked us to “Think Different”.
The key with these rule breakers is not that they broke rules and were fixated on just being different or not caring what others thought but that they were builders creating things that transformed and positively impacted the world of science, art, business and technology.
They did not tear down society or other people but rather got the world to see, think and feel differently.
They were about breaking rules in ways that empower, that open new horizons and drive growth.
They became themselves.
But while few can be like these giants we can all self-empower, set off toward new horizons and transform and grow ourselves by not letting external rulers drive our lives.
We can learn to compete with our elves and get better every day, versus competing with others or aligning with the changing fashions and expectations of others.
Let’s not be born as originals and die as copies.
It’s important to become who we are.
One way of doing so is to architect, sculpt and hone.
Architect.
“The way we spend our time defines who we are.” Jonathan Estrin.
One way to gain control is to architect one’s week in ways that time and its vagaries do not toss us around.
Consider setting aside an hour a day or seven hours a week to feed each of one’s physical, mental, emotional systems.
Physical operating system: A long walk or exercise.
Mental operating system: Learn or read or watch or do.
Emotional operating system: Connecting with friends and family. Helping others.
Image using Midjourney by Osoyoi
Sculpt.
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the sculptor’s job to release it” Michelangelo.
Every individual has one or more talents, and it is our job to find, feed and sculpt these talents.
Today we are increasingly in a world of builders, makers, creators, inventors and in sculpting something special out of raw materials is a way to find flow and make and leave one’s mark.
It may be writing or photography or video or writing code, cooking a meal, investing in a relationship, building a company or many other things but transforming and building is both an anti-dote and a homage to a transforming world.
We transform and are not just transformed.
Build things. Make stuff. Create something .Unleash potential.
We can release the statue within us or help others find the statue within them.
Image using Midjourney by Mikie555
Hone.
“To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.” Amanda Gorman
In a world of change we must hone ourselves to align with change since change does not care to adjust to us.
Honing through iteration, learning, re-inventing, and many other ways of enhancing excellence of craft.
For many of us in the coming years it will be how to incorporate, build on, extend, and leverage AI as a tool, enabler, extender, and idea generator for our work.