12. The Weekly - Fresh Perspectives
On dirty shadows, loving books and no more 'checking in'
Welcome back!
Inspiration
If you want to sell books, it helps to love reading
Sometimes the world of big business feels like it belongs to corporate suits employing a MBA syllabus to trick people into balancing their balance sheets for them. It feels like paint by numbers - the product doesn’t matter, just execute the playbook to maximise profits.
So this story is so refreshing - a huge business turned around by someone who cares enough about books to understand why people buy books.
Worlds collide
Giuseppe Castiglione was an Italian artist living in China in the 1700s. The blend of European and Chinese influences in his artwork is so fascinating.
“Castiglione's style of painting is a unique blend of European and Chinese compositional sensibility, technique and themes. He adjusted the European style he was trained in to suit Chinese taste; for example, strong shadows used in chiaroscuro techniques were unacceptable in portraiture as the Qianlong Emperor thought that shadows looked like dirt, therefore when Castiglione painted the Emperor, the intensity of the light was reduced so that there was no shadow on the face, and the features were distinct.” Wikipedia
Quick thoughts
Get someone unqualified to do the job
Margaret Sixel won the Oscar for Best Editing for Mad Max, even though (and perhaps because) this was the first action film she had ever edited.
This is the perfect example of the required skillset paired with a fresh perspective. Coming from a different industry, country or background is an advantage when you’re looking for innovation.
PS: Excuse the hyperbole in the title, Margaret Sixel is in no way ‘unqualified’, obviously she’s a an experienced film editor, just not in that specific genre.
Heyyyy, just checking in…
Project management is a tedious part of business life (unless you love it, in which case, good for you). I’m a big fan of keeping management-of-the-work to a minimum, so you can spend more time actually-doing-the-work, not just talking about it.
For that reason, I’m a big fan of the kanban concept. I’ve used this structure with every team I’ve worked with because it helps you quickly identify what is stuck and as we know, unsticking projects is basically the role of a Project Manager.
All it takes is setting up a board and holding a 15min meeting with your team each week.
If you’re spending more than an hour a week requesting status updates, give this a try. And if you run a creative studio, and don’t want to start from scratch you can get this template here.
That’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed this inspo round up but as always, I’d love to hear your feedback.
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