Author: Maja Todorovic

is a leadership coach and writer. Business in Rhyme is her creative corner where she blogs and teaches about beautiful uses of poetry and poetic techniques for improving writing, personal growth and creativity.

It takes only 10 minutes (exercise)

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

woodyhayes

While you are studying at a Faculty, many of the courses you encounter (obligatory) you don’t like or you don’t recognize at that particular time you do really need certain knowledge and skills they offer. And on the other hand, there are  subjects you simply adore and you are always excited about.

When you are young and full of energy you simply don’t want to waste your time on something you don’t like when there is bunch of other stuff you’d rather do. So I made a little pact with myself that everyday, at least for 10 minutes I will do seminars and projects that I’m excited about. Every day, consistently! Why I did this and how it helped me? It helped me in two ways:

  1. Since I had to devote my time also to courses I didn’t like that much, by doing what I liked for at least 10 minutes a day, I made sure I wasn’t behind with what I really wanted to learn;
  2. By doing what I liked, the good feeling generated made it easier for me to do things I didn’t like that much.

At the end, I managed to graduate a year before anticipated time.

These principles we can also apply to our creative projects and make ourselves more productive and exited about what we are doing.

Now, here is a little exercise I have for you today:

  1. Make an agreement with yourself that you will work on a project you are passionate about, every day for at least 10 minutes. It can be in the morning, your lunch break or evening – it doesn’t matter. The key word here is consistency.
  2. Decide on which project you will work tomorrow. If you are a writer, choose a poem, story or essay you are excited about and that you are eager to finish. Skip those “I must do this one, but I hate it”! That feeling of resistance only leads to more procrastination and that is something we want to avoid. Choose a project that brings smile on your face and that you simply love.
  3. Tomorrow, at your convenient time, set a timer for 10 – 15 minutes and work on your favorite project. Don’t pay attention to the quality of your work. The progress you make each day while working on what you love will generate such good feelings that it will make much easer for you to jump-start the project you were postponing and avoiding.
  4. When the time’s up, stop! Even if you would like to continue working, stop and leave yourself a reminder where to continue tomorrow.
  5. Tomorrow, repeat your newly established routine.
  6. After a couple of days you might consider prolonging your working time intervals and see how it goes. If it doesn’t and it makes you nervous and worried you won’t have time for things “I must do”, then just stick to those 10 minutes. It’s important for us to have fun while we are creating.
  7. If you skip some of the days, it’s Ok. Continue the next day where you previously stopped.

I hope you find this exercise fun and applicable to your creative routine. By being persistent it can eventually help you enjoy more your creativity and writing.

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NaPoWriMo day 8: You are the only

by Maja Todorovic, posted in My personal rhyme - from time to time

I want to tell you a secret

little secret, simple and honest –

You are the only

reason for your existence:

to grow

to glitter

to laugh.

 

You are the only

one who makes this prison

of negative persistence.

 

You are the only

one who can say: “No, I’m not a

quitter!”

 

Open your eyes widely

world that lies beneath you

is your home.

 

Open your heart kindly

let your dreams fly back to you,

wildly.

Maja S. Todorovic

NaPoWriMo day 7: Poet and a blank page

by Maja Todorovic, posted in My personal rhyme - from time to time

As blank page stares at me

clock ticks in the rhythm of my heart beat.

Thoughts swarm like bees in a miniscule hive.

 

Shadows make patterns, hexagonal hive

they dance, trying to catch me

not skipping the beat.

 

I try to write, as my thoughts following the beat

feisty and seduced, like honey queen in her hive,

run from my pen, throwing syllables at me.

 

This poem will never be written: because of me, in this mindless hive, it lost its beat.

NaPoWriMo Day 6: 3 X 4 green haiku

by Maja Todorovic, posted in My personal rhyme - from time to time

Cucumber, cabbage, cauliflower:
beheaded, without voice
swirl around

shorn of leaves, travel in pieces
without choice
bounce from ground to ceramic plate

Greens of the sweetness
curled above my moist tongue
test their fate

soft, crumbled blades dream of living
for a second longer, drunk
desperately among my teeth stuck.

Maja S. Todorovic

How poetry enhances development of explicit organizational knowledge

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

doris-lessing

In this article, I have in depth described how poetry can be closely related to accessing our tacit knowledge, which in our business world can bring us lot of advantage. Tacit knowledge is represented by all our skills that are not only shaped by our education, but mostly through our life conditions, environment, culture, ext. We could say that tacit knowledge is everything undefined, inexplicable, unknown yet perceived knowledge by one person – usually rooted deeply in the subconsciousness and its largely based on any internalized information.

In the paper “Cooking up a storm: Flavoring organizational learning with poetry” author Grisoni L., argues that poetry can go a step further and actually

create a fusion between tangible, rational and explicit knowledge and tacit or implicit knowledge, providing opportunities to access new organizational knowledge; emotional richness, texture and flavored nuance to organizational knowledge and learning.”

In the mentioned paper, poetry is used as a creative research method and as such it contributes to development of new forms of knowledge. Poetry reveals what is hidden, beneath the ordinary organizational behavior, procedures and policies.

The case study for the paper is based on a group of 60 middle and senior managers from a single organization and they were asked to form small groups of three, share their stories and experiences from their working environment. Listeners would capture key words from these stories and together the small group would develop short poems using the haiku poetic form.

Here are some of the presented haikus:

Change risk move frightened

Thought safe, hidden fear revealed

Moved, sparkling sunshine

Ongoing concern – always

People in need, a start

Towards positive change!

Member of team

Develop role, career

Encouraged, valued.

After successful presentation of hauikus, conclusions that emerged are that working with poetry holds the potential to capture emotion and express the un-sayable with passion, truth and intensity. It provides a supportive underpinning to discussions relating to emotions, which form an important part of the organizational learning literature, surfacing and facilitating dialogue about these issues in a way that other processes may not access.

What’s also interesting is that we do create explicit form of knowledge where our skilled performance is  delivered in new ways through social interaction. In this research paper has been shown that poetry is a wonderful medium for doing that. But, how else can poetry help us in business setting? Any thoughts? Please share in the comments below.

Knowledge

Now that I know
That passion warms little
Of flesh in the mold,
And treasure is brittle,
I’ll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound.
Louise Bogan

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