Happy Friday! We’ve compiled our favorite articles and essays from the last month for you to browse and enjoy over the weekend.
What makes a team exceed expectations? Brett Steenbarger, a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University, argues for three tested and research-driven strategies that enable teams to function at the highest level in creativity, innovation and productivity. In addition to “distraction-free concentration” and opportunities for mentorship, Steenbarger’s Forbes piece highlights the importance of psychological safety – for groups and individuals. So what does that look like?
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What can business leaders learn from poetry?
The utility of poetry – and of literature and the humanities in general – is under scrutiny on a near daily basis. As our executive director Ann Kowal Smith noted in a recent post, many universities across the country are proposing cuts to their humanities offerings; one University of Wisconsin campus proposed the near-total discontinuation of its English department. If university administrators and faculty struggle to see value in poetry, does it have a place in regular society – let alone the business world?
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The sudden flash of insight that comes in an aha moment brings a sense of satisfaction that humans have valued since mythic times, when Archimedes shouted “Eureka!” after discovering a solution to a real-world problem. Such moments change individual lives and also provide breakthroughs in the world of work. St. Paul reinvented his life when he was knocked off his horse. Sir Isaac Newton theorized gravity when he saw an apple fall. Tchaikovsky said, “Generally, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly. . . It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms.”
So how do we create the perfect conditions for these flashes of creativity in the workplace?
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In a recent Wall Street Journal essay adapted from his new biography of Leonardo da Vinci, author Walter Isaacson explores the life and mind of the ultimate Renaissance Man. How did Leonardo’s ambitious visions become realities? What made him so imaginative and prescient that people still debate his art and craft ball bearings based on his original design? What can we learn from the habits of a creative genius?
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We’re proud to announce that Books@Work has been recognized as an innovative advocate for reading by the prestigious National Book Foundation. The Foundation released its 2017 Innovations in Reading Prize, and Books@Work received an honorable mention, one of only four.
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Happy Friday! We’ve scoured the web for thought-provoking articles and essays for you to enjoy over the weekend.
In the Paris Review, Benjamin Ehrlich writes about neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal and his early and fervent predilection for reading fiction. Cajal’s father earned a medical degree after a “grueling life” as the son of peasant farmers. He later despised all literary culture, allowing only medical books in the house. Cajal, however, had other ideas. How did reading fiction shape the mind of “the father of modern neuroscience”?
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