Friday, January 22, 2010
There is Art in Everything!
Behind the Scenes at Taylor Studios, Inc ©: "This saying is a bit of a running joke around Taylor Studios’ office. I like to remind my number crunchers that even the game of business is art. There is art in predicting where the market is going to move, what our clients are going to love, how many staff members we are going to need in six months, how many projects are going to be delayed, and on and on."
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6 comments:
I have a feeling this article was posted on this blog for the purposes of looking at the elements of business briefly mentioned. But if I could make a point about one of the statements said...I really hate it when people say that everything is an art form. It is now, just due to the pure carelessness in tossing around that word and equating every sort of talent to "art" but that's really not what it is. I think you can find art anywhere, but I think it has a very distinct notion of communicating an idea or expressing oneself by some means, whether that be music, writing, drawing, etc. Well, to retaliate against myself, I would actually ask myself this question: if I was playing football, and football was an extension of myself and what I believed to be an important aspect of life, wouldn't I technically be expressing myself by playing football, therefore I am an artist? Imagine football wasn't a sport. That someone wanted to communicate the idea of aggressive human behavior via holding a performance piece during which time a bunch of guys tossed around a ball and tackled one another. Yeah...I guess you could consider it an art. But that's not why most people play football I guess.
YAY tangents :) What was I saying? I don't like to scrutinize the word because, as you can see, I end up not knowing what I'm talking about. But I still don't really believe business is an art form. Sorry if I took the point of that article and turned it into something else :D
I think this article contains a lot of valuable points that could be applicable to planning in the fields of production management and technical direction. I find it especially relative when he mentions that he had to estimate not only the future costs but also the estimated times of the project based on what the project what, who the client was (how fast or slow they made decisions) and the capabilities of the team assigned. I found it funny that it made his two coworkers uncomfortable to have to estimate the teams abilities but nonetheless, it stresses how important it is to try to practically consider the factors that effect the progress of your projects whether or not you determine them based on intuition instead of hard facts.
This article makes a lot of good points. i agree with what the author said about making a decision even if you don't have 100% of the facts. It reminds me of what we where learning in PTM the other day about estimating and how the more often you do it the more experienced you get. The more decisions you make the better you get at making the right decision and that will make you a better leader.
I would agree with the author, if she maintains "there is art in the game of business". That is not out of sympathy for her struggling with tough work, which is seeping from this article. But as she chose it for the title, if she claims "There is Art in Everything!", I doubt if it is... Might be or might be not.
Anyway, yes, the business is an art. First of all, the number is important art invented by human. The math was born based on the concept of number. Further, almost all phenomena surrounding us can be explained, or at least projected by mathematical calculations. The number of art embodies the flow of business activity.
If we interpret her words, "use the expertise to make decisions without perfect data" into this way - read the future (in the market) based on one's instinct and farsightedness gained through experience-, the art in business is lying here in that a person controls the activity by dealing with (reading) the number.
A teacher of mine in high school liked to remind us that there are style points to be earned in anything, including math (his subject.) This was his way of making the same point - finding a bold, effective solution is artful, even when applied to things that don't on their surface seem like a creative endeavor. This requires, as the article talks about, a willingness to deviate from the standard, and also the confidence to make a decision even if it entails accepting some risk.
Although I do find that there is a bit of personalization in everything that you do as well as some intuition involved, I do not agree that that equates to art. This statement is always made by people who don't really study art at all. I'm generalizing there but, still it seems so. Yes, there is a bit of an insight used in business especially while negotiating but, I wouldn't say so much as to call it an at unless, of course, you called the study of communicating an art(which I agree with) in which case, this can be used as a catch-all for this statement.
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