Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

Joy must lay down each stroke of her painting. If what you’re

making is something new, something never seen before, your

process must be an improvisation.

Impeccable preparation supports Release, the fundamental

quality of artful making in rehearsal, the studio, or the meet-

ing. If you know you’ve prepared impeccably, you can trust the

truth and rightness of your impulsive, reflexive responses to

what happens in the scene or in the meeting. You can trust

them enough to impose your new gesture, your wild idea, on

the others, giving them something they must include in their

own work. If your impulse turns out to be incompatible with

something else that’ ...