Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Poetry and CEO's

Via Jilly at Poetry Hut Blog:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

6 comments:

Justin Evans said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Justin Evans said...

One of the stats I quoted to my students when I taught English, was that during a survey, 75% of CEO's attributed a large portion of their success in business to a strong background in literature.

I got that from one of my college professors and for the life of me I cannot remember his source.

Sorry about the delete. Tons of typos.

Anonymous said...

That's funny. I just interviewed with a CEO today in Seattle, and he was very, very interested in the fact that I write poetry. He saw my background in literature and my poetry-writing as an asset because, in his words, I would be bring to the table something nobody else at their organization has.

I wonder if he had just read this article. I bet he had. How potentially fortunate for me. (If I get the job, this will officially be the first time in my life that poetry has resulted in any monetary gain.)

Peter said...

Dana: that's great! Hope you get the job.

A. D. said...

Alright, it's settled. Poetry goes back on the resume.

Anonymous said...

Peter, thanks. I hope I *want* the job if it’s offered. But how can I not give serious consideration to an employer who shows interest in and takes my poetry seriously?

Also, I am printing out that entire article and putting it in my professional portfolio. I will trot the article out in future interviews whenever poetry comes up and there’s an opportunity for me to make a case for why poetry, rather than making me a flight risk, actually makes me the ideal person for the job.

I’m not kidding. I’ve circulated stranger documents (and even objects) during interviews, so far with successful results.