Read for the unknown

The Unknown. At first brush, it sounds like the province of philosophers or priests. But entrepreneurs, and particularly people in the technology sector, have to deal with issues of the unknown every day. One kind of response is obvious: get the data! But what do you do in situations where you can?t?

Our January Lab with the Illinois Humanities Council quickly came to the consensus that there could be a role for works of art, literature, and history to play ? not as idle objects of entertainment, but real stimuli for companies? abilities to cope with the variables they can?t see.

One advocate of this idea in the room was Amanda Lannert, president of multimedia products company Jellyvision (best known as the makers of the ?You Don?t Know Jack!? games). We recently spoke with Lannert about the role the humanities could play in a company?s development. Here are the key questions she helped us answer.

?

This Lab quickly came to a consensus that one of the main unrecognized values of the humanities is their ability to help us deal with the uncertain or the unknown. What does that mean to you?

A lot of the critical thinking inspired by the humanities is about looking at something empathically and drawing parallels to other ideas or events in history. It?s an ability to think both critically and creatively about something in front of you, as well as to think about how context might have impacted it. It?s reading not just for text, but subtext ? not just what people are saying or what it seems like on the surface, but what motivations are behind it. That can lead to more nuanced and less reactionary thinking.

At our company, we say that if you come from a liberal arts background, you?ve learned how to learn. If you?ve really studied anthropology or Romantic literature or all these different kinds of things, it has nothing to do with how you approach business, but you?ve developed the ability to learn how to learn, and that has lifelong work applications.

?

How would you articulate this value of the humanities to someone who is not familiar with it or does not seem receptive to it?

I would remind them that Steve Jobs was first a student of humanities and second a student of technology. I would try to anchor it in something; I wouldn?t just get ethereal about why reading is important or why a certain aspect of culture and reading and art are important. I would try to put it into the context of the kind of impact that I get.

?

As an entrepreneur, when do you find yourself facing the types of uncertainty that can be better handled if one has engaged with the humanities?

There are so many ways ? I?ll just start laying them out.

You hire somebody based on an hour-long interview and an audition. Do you know that they?re not going to walk in one day and shoot up the place? No. You don?t know how human beings are going to behave based on meeting them for 45 minutes. Human behavior is an unknown ? whether someone?s going to be smart or not, a hard worker or not, a good cultural fit or not.

Then you have larger questions like, ?What is the future of technology?? How are people going to be consuming media and how is that going to change and how are we going to make money off of it accordingly? There?s constant change and you need to put together the best plan that you can. You need to be a student of the text and subtext of what other companies are doing and what various pundits are saying.

The unknown also creates the possibility for invention. We may have some guys playing around with a new technology asking, ?What if we do this?? Then someone else says, ?What if we do that plus this?? Then all of a sudden Jellyvision has a new product that has a hundred thousand potential bookings behind it in about six weeks. ? In most cases, businesses set up a gauntlet of tests, focus groups, readings, and quality assurance mechanisms to take the unknown out. ?Does this taste good? Does it taste good to everybody? Who does it taste good to?? A lot of times that kills innovation. Sometimes you just can?t know. Sometimes there?s no real way to test something without putting it out there. ?

When companies are not cool with the unknown, with unpredictability, then there is a lack of movement, a lack of change, ?analysis paralysis.? Nobody can make a decision, nobody wants to move forward for fear of being wrong, everything starts to get bogged down in committees where too many people are touching everything. ? When you get a company culture that is driven by fear of the unknown, it really clamps down on the people who actually have a shot at making a difference.

?

In what specific ways do you imagine the humanities helping companies to grapple with the unknown?

It?s not the humanities in the abstract ? it?s people who have learned how to learn. It?s the people who know how to go clear their heads. They know they can go look at some art for an hour and come back and redo their story boards. They know they don?t have to take everything literally when they read. It?s being a complete and empathetic listener.

One of the things we do at Jellyvision, which I completely stole from Delivering Happiness (the book about Zappos) is that we have a library. Each new employee who comes to the company gets to pick a book and all it has to be is a great, meaningful book you think people should read. It doesn?t have to be about JavaScript or about marketing communications or the psychology of persuasion. That book is dedicated to the library with your name on a plaque and people will read it. So we have a culture that prioritizes being a student of the world.

?

So let?s say someone from an organization like the Illinois Humanities Council hears that you have this library and the desire to create this culture in your company. How could they make that happen?

The big thing that they could do is help spotlight the books that people need to read. What are the twelve books that people in creative agencies need to read this year that we wouldn?t have normally found on our own?

Let?s say the key themes for 2011 were a sense of being disenfranchised, a sense of the modern man, too much Facebook, too much digital interaction. Then you might assign The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers so people could see how TV had this same effect in the 50s. You don?t need a trade magazine that diagnoses this stuff ? there are thousands of those already out there.

They could provide a list like that as well as some contextual perspective. As much as I think that reading makes you a smarter, better, person, I think that would make you a smarter, better, person. ?

To do this right, you would need the right team of people who can speak business and know what the buyers will want, then figure out the right lightening rod of curriculum to put together. Is it a half day? Is it a full day? Where do people go? What do they do? What notes do they have? What pre-brief materials? What happens during the day? What happens afterwards? How do you stay in touch? You would need marketing people who could put it together and move it forward as a defined product, rather than just a discussion about how great the humanities are.

rudy zynga free shipping free shipping esophageal cancer marfan syndrome marfan syndrome