Business Artist Digest Feb 23, 2024

I’m young. I’m old.

What is nature in one word? Change

I was recently in Nashville, TN celebrating my mom’s 70th birthday. For me, one of her 4 kids, it was also a time of reflection.

I moved from Indiana to California when I was 21. Come this June, I will have spent half my life in the Golden State.

At 42 years old, I’ve also spent nearly half my life on this earth.

That got me thinking – what a great time to be alive, at middle age that is. Hear me on this.

In the corporate world – life is like two triangles facing each other, like an hourglass. The vertical axis is your age and depth of experience, and the horizontal axis is your breadth of knowledge. For me and others, I’m sure, you leave college and sure you have a degree in something, but for all that matters, you are a generalist – inexperienced with a wide range of curiosities and interests.

As you grow in your career, you rise by getting specialized – be it industry or skill topics, you get good at a smaller set of things, but they are important for you and for the company you work for. Right around the time you are a director or senior director – the narrowing need for specialization decreases and you are more rewarded and promoted on your ability to learn across functional areas. As a former consultant, this is where we would come in and run business simulations for VPs and above and put them on a table with an assortment of different roles, competing against other tables to execute a joint strategy. Many that would lean into the exercises, would cite later on as one of the most important career experiences they had. For others they’d believe that because they were an expert in their domain, they could be naturally an expert at running the entire business – they’d refuse to listen, to learn from others, and ultimately fail in the simulation and elsewhere. The leaders I saw who embraced new challenges outside their domain are the ones you see in C-Suite roles today.

Collaboration in one word? Compromise

Life on the other hand – is almost the inverse of that. We start off knowing very little – not sure what we want to explore. It’s a fun ride to middle age. With no experience to filter out what we like and don’t like – we tend to say ‘yes’ more. We lean into new ideas more naturally with a creative curiosity. We try things more frequently and have a high willingness to explore.

In reflecting on my life, at the age of 42 – I’m both young and old. I still have reverence and respect for my elders, but I still remember what it was like to be young. At the same time, I know there is this biological programming that will tempt me to lean into patterns and learn from my experiences, and that sort of feels like it's already happening, and it’s a bit scary. For those my age and older, how do you avoid nature’s natural rhythm that proves that we will become victims of our mental conditioning of life?

As I’m releasing my book The Business Artist, I’m also examining if I could have written this book earlier or later in life. Or is right now the perfect time? The peak-end of my divergence?

What habits or tips do you find to stay open to life’s new experiences? There are many outliers out there, but I also I know from my observation of others, what age and years on this earth can do to creative output. The odds are stacked against us Business Artists unless we can find intentional ways to combat the cycle.

Keep exploring and keep creating,

Adam

NEWS ALERT!

Print Proofing Nearly Complete

I can't even begin to tell you how exciting it was the hold the first print-proof copy of The Business Artist in my hand just over a week ago. It is getting some final edits and updates, but should be released the first week of March! I'll send out a more formal announcement - and a book-movie trailer when it's ready for your purchase. Audible will be ready as well! And a big thank you to those of you who have already taken the time to read advanced copies and provide your blurbs. We have some heavy hitters in there!

Business Artist Spotlight

For this week's spotlight, I'm honored to feature Jennifer Turner Director, HR Strategy Consultant, Alphabet Companies at Google.

Jennifer's career story is an inspiration for Business Artists! After growing up studying opera in NY and Ohio, she traveled extensively with her early music career. Often she would end up in California, where she began applying her stage and live performance background to the world of learning and development.

Her ability to apply her artistry in the corporate space eventually landed her a role at Google - where she's been for nearly 17 years. We met in 2013 when she was in charge of learning strategy for global sales. We collaborated often to bring different types of live experiential learning to her field teams. Jennifer and I connected quickly on the importance of not training a one-size-fits-all approach, but finding ways to let the sellers maximize their strengths and learn to improvise. Which was no small task for the heavy IQ sellers!

Jennifer gave me and "us" permission to innovate together on some work I'm still very proud of today in part of my "life's portfolio".