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🤔 So here's the thing
Eastern philosophy kicks ass. Especially if you’re in the West. Because it introduces us to ways of thinking that might feel so alien, so obscure at times, that we can’t help but question whatever is happening around us. In a meeting room craving for answers, it’s helpful to be able to ask fresh questions. Plus, I’ve found that a clear, non-leading question is the most effective way to challenge the people around you without coming across as an asshole.

(From experience, ranting usually has the exact opposite effect.)

If all you know about Eastern philosophy is that there was some dude named Buddha and that meditating is like so zen right now, then here’s a great introduction that covers other, probably more interesting, ideas. One that specifically caught my attention – and I am 100% projecting here – is the idea that even broken things have value and meaning in them.

There’s a word for that. Kintsugi. It’s a great word. To quote the video:

"Breaks have a rich merit all of their own. It’s a profoundly poignant idea because we all all, in some ways, broken creatures. It’s not shameful to need repair. An amended bowl is a symbol of hope that we too can be put together again, and still be loved despite our many evident flaws."

Three things on my mind about this.

1. Every client challenge we receive should presume something is broken. People often respond poorly to questions like ‘what’s the problem here?’, as their answers tend to cover the symptoms of the problem (‘we’re not hitting our sales targets’), when the richness comes from its root causes (‘because of these reasons’). But it’s hard to talk about problems because it means something went wrong, and if something went wrong then those in charge were wrong. And if they’re wrong, then their contribution (and their very personhood) is broken. Being (or being seen as) broken is worse than being famous for that one Christmas party episode everyone still talks about today.

2. Strategy and creativity are inherently broken processes. An amended bowl is something that happens after a bowl was shattered to pieces. At our best, we shatter a messy problem into small pieces that we then reassemble with a special glue called Keynote. Tidbits of information and evidence and qual research (if you’re lucky) and words used in the brief and throughout the organisation, each of them broken fragments about whatever thing, coalesce to become a strategy. And because no idea ever comes fully formed, they too are always a bit broken. Our job is to help the team see something in it and keep going. A broken idea, like a broken bowl, is indeed a symbol of hope.

3. Identity is broken. The last three books I read – The Good Immigrant, Teaching Plato In Palestine and The Descent of Man – all tackle the subject of identity in the modern world. Whether you’re from a minority group in Britain, a poor neighbourhood in Brazil or just a man who needs an outlet to feel like one, there is a sense of brokenness about each and every one of us. As I recently heard, "everyone has problems, especially those who think they don't." But we hate to admit that, because it somehow devalues us in a society that aims for growth, efficiency, performance. If we're "broken", we’re not "good enough".

To be (seen as) broken is to halt the machine, and to talk about it with someone else is to stop more cogs from working on their set of deliverables. But a machine with broken cogs inevitably fails, so maybe the short-term halt benefits the entire system in the long run. Kintsugi is about that. Recognising the brokenness in things, in people, not as a way to point fingers and exert dominance, but as a way to recognise something that is so very human and, in the process, to set a vision that this too shall pass. [tweet this]
Previous editions: Are not all things something?, The philosophy behind Will Humphrey's work, How to really listen.
🙃 Keep on gifing
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