The Poetic Advantage

Change has changed…
Today’s executives and managers face a dizzying array of large-scale human problems where solutions must be created out of ambiguity, uncertainty, and across disciplines—the critical thinking skills traditionally found in liberal arts education.

If anything embodies a liberal arts approach, it is the practice and study of poetry. Since antiquity, poetry has been at the heart of our interaction, expression, and creativity. And now more than ever, poetry is the ideal discipline for developing the perspective and patience for making order out of difficulty and chaos.

From the Harvard Business Review to Boston Consulting Group, studies show that poetry helps executives understand “the other” with greater empathy, and enhances greater self-awareness and qualitative and creative judgement skills. Poetry drives readers to generate nearly twice as many solutions as compared to traditional problem-solving approaches.

Businesses want managers who have “the ability to think, the ability to write, the ability to understand the cultural or historical context of whatever business decision they’re making,” according to Rachel Reiser of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. From technology to psychology and from marketing to neuro-biology, we find that poetry is behind the insights that power innovation. If you can learn to read poetry, and if you are inspired to write it, you can tackle any problem in business.

Poetry provides the filter to re-see the work right in front of you and re-frame the world outside of your office. In Poetic Advantage workshops, you will learn how to use poetry’s best strategies to build and refine your creative capabilities allowing you to keep your organization entrepreneurial, help make sense out of complex markets, and communicate solutions concisely to a diverse audience.

“Poetic Advantage will enable you to transform ambiguity into certainty, information into knowledge, and knowledge into something original and marketable.”

— Mark Yakich

Program Content

Intensive 1-day workshop featuring a tailored set of lectures, discussions, case studies, and poetry analyses where you will apply Poetic Advantage to your own business straightaway. Hence, you are encouraged to come with specific challenges that you would like to work on during the program.

In the opening session you will learn how reading and writing poetry develops the capacity of all managers to become world-class leaders who can hold multiple perspectives at once, create solutions when problems are unclear, and communicate answers to a wide audience.

You will learn

How to work comfortably with ambiguity and uncertainty
How to approach your market in a way that makes the ordinary extraordinary
How to better communicate with colleagues through logical yet unconventional thinking
How to become an expert observer of clients and competitors
How to incorporate natural-born creativity in your day-to-day tasks