Amena Brown
I live my life as a full-time poet, writer, performer, speaker, typist, errand runner…depending on which day you catch me. This life is not as freewheeling as it seems. It is a tenuous balance and juggle of many different opportunities that somehow add up to not quite having to eat ramen noodles for every meal. A couple of years ago, I had a full-time gig writing for a Fortune 500 company, editing and composing documents geared towards employees. I was a poser: a creative brain who had seemingly by some fluke been hired to work for a company that achieved its bottom line via left brain initiatives. As a right brain thinker in a left-brain corporate world, I felt as if my creative thinking skills set could not help me win my boss’ approval or a promotion.
According to Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, right-brain skills sets will be a commodity in what is becoming the new marketplace. This means a couple of things: there are right-brain thinkers currently feeling stifled at jobs where there skills and talent will soon be of immense value and there are left-brain executives who will need to know the tools to manage right-brain ideas while completing left-brain agendas. Therein lies the rub.
As one of the creative brains on my work team, I was put in charge of creating teambuilding exercises for the department meetings. In this I discovered something I loved: helping people use creativity to better work together. To my management team, the use of creativity was viewed as fluff with more focus on adhering to systems and the way things had always been done.
Now as a performance poet and workshop facilitator, I see how businesses can encourage support of arts and creativity by making more room for right-brain thought. Creativity is how we solve problems. This means creativity is not the fluff of business; it is essential in business. This leaves a great opportunity for leaders and executives to not out creative thinkers but to instead accept them.
My experience as a poet stuck in a cubicle taught me that creativity and arts sensibilities can be used in any environment to increase productivity, enhance work relationships, and solve problems. Right brain and left-brain, arts and business, are not supposed to be us versus them battles. They are instead supposed to be give-and-take conversations and collaborations where we can all learn from each other.
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Dear Amena,
I am a poet. In a cubicle. Right this second.
Thank you so much for this blog post. I hope things are going great at Urban Grind! I miss that place.
Peace,
Caitlin
caitlin! urban grind misses you.
i’m hosting my last open mic of the year there on dec 30. can’t wait! be encouraged. when i was a poet in a cubicle i kept a file where i could write a poem every now and then to keep my sanity. 
helps to keep your brain feeling a little creative.
What about musician’s stuck in a cubicle? Unfortunately, it isn’t something I can easily walk away from because I have dependents that need my current income. However, as a social media marketer, I can certainly see where you are coming from.
The constant argument from social media “gurus” is how content is king. If this really is the case, then artists, writers, etc. are the ones that will generate interesting and compelling content with sole purpose of attracting and keeping attention.
Interesting read…thanks. Miguel
How insightful. I enjoyed this post. Most people in cubicles are artists of some sort. Good, well-conducted business is an art. Perhaps, like you did in this article Amena, our artistry needs to be reignited.
I admire your writing style and the topics you have written about. Hope to hear more from you soon.