I spent the weekend at TEDxLugano discussing the professions of the future. We shared not only time and space but ideas. Reflecting on those days it felt like time expanded. It was just a weekend but it feels a lifetime dense of emotions, experiences, thoughts. It reminded me of Burdick’s reflections on time. He wrote that time is a social phenomenon not only in how it is measured, but in how it is experienced. Our social exchanges have meaning only and because of our ability to synchronize them among ourselves. Empathy becomes then the capacity of synchronising ourselves with the world around us.
I brought on the TEDx Lugano stage poetry to talk about how we can innovate businessby innovating humanity. If empathy is the clock that ticks in the consciousness of another as Maria Popova wrote, poetry is the measurement of the status our humanity. Empathy is a skill that requires time to be developed. It marks our journey from childhood to adulthood. Poetry supports this development by broadening our empty and compassion. When embraced, it becomes how we grow out of aloneness into collectiveness.
At TEDx Lugano we discussed about technology, robotics, virtual reality, getting us into the 4th industrial revolution and how to equip ourselves and thrive. To me, despite the diversity of opinions and perceptions on the future of work, technology is the extensions of our consciousness. The individual consciousness and the collective consciousness. If we want to use technology to serve all humankind we need to bring poetry back and accessible to all. We need to be able to connect the rational and emotional and poetry is the bridge between the two. Adding poetry to business (to life) supports all of us to: attend our humanity; understand what moves inside and outside us; listen to the needs business tries to resolve and make meaning of the multitudes: the unique human facets we contain and the universal facets of a global world.
Walking the path to ReNEW Business requires us to first accept our humanity then to innovate humanity!
If time is the substance we are made of - Borges - poetry is the transformative power of the substance we are made of. I invite you all to attend your own humanity and expand it through poetry as an act of self-leadership.
Modified from The Whisper - Leader.
You will never know till you stand up
There is enough space within you
Space to contain the multitudes
Stand up
Speakup
Say no
No to fragmentation
No to moving faster
Slow down
Know your multitudes
Learn what moves inside and outside them
Turn towards the truth
Stand up
Speak up
The Whispersaid
I want to talk business in rhyme.