Superskills
Not an overnight success
I’m not ashamed to admit I’m addicted to books. So I’m excited to be a judge for one of Australia’s leading indigenous arts awards, which means I have to read 10 novels in the next two months. Some are by old favourites, but many by writers I’ve not read before. But it got me thinking, where do these writers come from, and how do they develop their craft?
Oral storytelling has forever been central to Aboriginal people yet it’s only in recent decades that writers like these are at the forefront of Australian literature. Not to mention the popular rise of legions of Aboriginal artists (from Emily Kame Kngwarreye to Tracey Moffat), and Aboriginal film-makers and actors (think Warwick Thornton and Rachel Perkins).
The latter both emerged from the 1980s Central Australia Aboriginal Media Association, which was an early talent incubator that has built careers of dozens of actors and directors. The RAKA Award, too, helps to incubate artistic talent, recognising that careers take a lifetime to nurture, that overnight successes are mostly illusory, and that what needs to be rewarded is not just a single work, but a body of work built over decades.
Question: What talent (and unheard voices) are you incubating?
Superskills
Two clients this week told me they valued the same ‘superskill’ of mine. One put it this way: “We need the Andrew Hollo cut-through”. I asked him what he meant, and he said, “Your ability to ask the right questions, manage the differences of opinion that emerge, and keep moving through the b^&*$@t”.
My wife, Kate, is an interior designer and her ‘superskill’ is looking at spaces with a new perspective, often flipping customary assumptions on their heads. She is masterful of placing herself in the position of the inhabitants and immediately reconceptualising space to suit their requirements, something that architects, who think predominantly spatially, are not trained to do.
When I work with my clients, I always have my ‘superskill detector’ operating, as I want to recognise the standout capabilities that we can leverage to ensure their success.
Question: Do you know what your superskill is?
The untranslatable
Do you know the Germans have a word for someone who’ll criticise from a safe distance? (Handschuhschneeballwerfer literally means, “Someone who throws a snowball with gloves on”). They also have a word, packesel, for the person who’s stuck carrying everyone else’s bags on a trip (and, yes, I’ve been a packesel).
Eunoia is a website that collects words that exist in one language, but not in others. I’ve laughed out loud more often from this site than anything else I’ve read in the past week.
It’s lists hundreds of words, some in languages I’ve never heard of (a Turkic language called Nogai has a word for members of a neighborhood getting together to do work for free for a poor member of their community). Not all are quite so noble — Nogai also has a word for people who annoy you by repeating everything you say.
In my strategy work, I’m often called upon to ‘define concepts that we don’t have words for’, relating to organisational purpose, or roles, or capabilities, because my clients often aren’t doing conventional work, or aren’t measuring success by conventional means.
Question: What untranslatable terms do you wish you had in your organisation?
Please quickly click the ‘heart’ to let me know you’ve enjoyed reading this week.
For those having a long weekend (owing to the non-birthday of our esteemed Monarch), I hope it’s relaxing and refreshing.
See you next Friday,
Andrew