Tag: Leadership

Craft vs Manufacturing

Posted on by Seung Chan Lim 0

“I keep learning
the same lesson
over
and over
and over again.”
said the founder.

“I don’t know what
is wrong with me.”
she lamented.

“May I share a story?”
I asked.

“Yes, of course.”
said the founder.

“Before I went to art school,”
I began.

“I thought craft
was outdated.
After all,
craft
makes you repeat yourself
over
and over
and over again.
…
Why do craft,
when we have machines?’”
I explained.

“That makes sense.”
said the founder.

“Then I learned
that life
is a craft.

There is no machine
that can live
for us.

If it did,
it would no longer be
our lives.

Yes,
craft makes us
repeat ourselves
over
and over
and over again.

But that
is life.

What craft does
is it trains us
to learn
from the repetition.

Willingness to Take Responsibility

Posted on by Seung Chan Lim 0

“What if he doesn’t accept
my apology?” asked the CEO.

“His response
is his responsibility.
The question I’m asking
is what responsibility
are you willing to take?” I remarked.

“My responsibility?” he asked.

“Yes,
whether your apology
is accepted or not,
which is within his ability
to respond,
thus his response-ability
and his choice,
are you willing to choose apology
simply because
it is within your response-ability?” I replied.

“…
I am.” he replied.

“Why?” I probed.

“It’s funny.
I don’t know why,
but just thinking about it
makes me feel healed.” he reflected.

Validation

Posted on by Seung Chan Lim 0

At first,
I thought I had to do something huge
for my life
to be worth something.

Until I realized
that doing something huge
would still not be enough
unless I could feel
that it was indeed
worth it.

In other words,
what I was after
was a feeling.

…

Once I realized
that validation
was what I was after,
I noticed I lacked clarity
on whose validation I craved
and why.

…

Once I gained clarity
on whose validation I craved
and why,
it turned out
there were only a handful of people
whose validation
I deeply craved.

So I went to them
one by one
to learn how I can provide them
value,
only to learn
how remarkably simple—
not easy, but simple—
it was
to do so.

It was then
that I realized
that at the end of the day,
the most difficult challenge
wasn’t
earning their validation.

The most difficult challenge
was accepting
that my life can have significant worth
without doing something
huge.

Deadline

Posted on by Seung Chan Lim 0

What I learned in art
is that the work gets done
because there’s an exhibition.

Without an exhibition
the artist can work on their piece
until they’re perfect.

Except
compared to perfection
the work
is never be enough.

The role of an exhibition
is to force us to define
what is “good enough.”

Asking for Advice

Posted on by Seung Chan Lim 0

Sometimes,
we need to ask for advice
on how to solve
our problems.

Before asking,
it may be worth getting clear on:

  1. What the current situation is,
  2. Where you’re trying to move to,
  3. What you believe are required
    to make such a move,
  4. What you’ve already done
    to fulfill those requirements,
    and having done them,
  5. What you see
    are the remaining problems.