Mastodon

mackenzian

Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

creating

By

How detractors can move you forward

Expect criticism. If you’re doing something worth doing, know that an effort that matters will draw detractors.

Don’t reverse-engineer this principle, though: no matter how tempting it might be to shrug “Must be doing something right!”, criticism isn’t validation all by itself. You’ll need to actually assess your work to prove it worthy.

But if what you’re doing is worth doing, there will be those who think it shouldn’t be done at all and others who, like the moderate ministers of Birmingham, Alabama, object to your method, timing, or goals.

Listen for the message behind the criticism.

A black man with close cropped hair and full beard draws on a canvas or paper with a marker. Photo credit: Death to the Stock Photo. Used under license.
If you’re doing something worth doing, it will draw detractors. (Licensed image.)

Black Enterprise recently asked Alice Walker about how she’s weathered criticism over the course of her life:

You come into this world with your assignment and you kind of know that there are certain things that you will be given the understanding to try to accomplish for the common good.

And that’s your job, and you just take it on like any other job. And then you figure out that many people won’t like it, and they’ll try to stop you, and they may stop you, but that’s their job. It’s not your job.

Know your job. And know that there’s no advance without detractors, no action without concern trolling, and no innovation without critics.

Crowds don’t gather to stare at an empty wall: reactive attention is a sign that something is afoot. So get clear about what that something is, and then do your part to pour substance into it. That’s how criticism can move you forward.

By

Seth Godin: Noticing and Creating

On Being hosts internet entrepreneur Seth Godin:

On the Art of Noticing and Then Creating

Choose between Krista Tippett’s edited and unedited audio conversation with Seth about the responsibilities of creation—”being artists rather than cogs”; the risks inherent to contemporary change; and how conventional education doesn’t yet prepare students for the creative and less bounded age in which they’re living. From the unedited version:

KT: In every discipline we can think of, whether it’s education or business or how we structure workplaces or even government, churches, religious organizations—the old forms have stopped working, but we still really don’t have any kind of picture of what the new forms [will look like]; we’re creating them in real time.

SG: My great-grandfather, before he lost everything in the crash of 1929, was a pretty successful guy, and they actually asked him and his peers, “What should school do? You guys are all the successful barons of industry: what should school do?” And we built school to make those guys happy, to create the factory workers that they needed. Because school was being built and they got to pick.

But if we sat down with the successful people of today, our community leaders and our corporate leaders et cetera and said “What should school do?” none of them would say “Let’s make it so that people are more obedient and better at memorizing facts.” But that’s what we still do at school. And what we’re seeing is that most people who are making an impact, the Sarah Joneses of the world, the Jacqueline Novogratzes of the world, they’re doing it despite what they learned in school, not because of what they learned in school…

And if I sit down with a bunch of 7th graders or 1st graders and tell them to brainstorm or raise their hand or innovate or make something, they find it way easier than when I sit down with a bunch of college students. Because the college students are afraid of being wrong. …We spend 15 years training people to be afraid of being wrong.

Tippett and Godin also talk about artistic tribes of “strangers like us”—voluntary networks that congregate around shared memes, goals, and motivations. This contemporary tribalism, Godin argues, can be positive but the choice to nurture its positive forms is entirely ours.

The difference between the two podcasts is about 36 minutes. Transcript and further reading also available.