#tim leberecht

Ein Jahrhundert nach der Industrialisierung, kommt eine erneute Welle auf uns zu. Das vernetzte, digitale Zeitalter, mit wachsenden Daten und die daraus folgende Daten-Überflutung und radikaler Transparenz, hat uns eingeholt. Tim Leberecht hat in seinem unterhaltsamen Vortrag einen Einblick gegeben, was das für uns heißt.

“Wir brauchen eine neue romantische Bewegung”. Denn allmählich scheidet sich Business von der Menschlichkeit. Die heranwachsenden Technologien, machen es schwieriger menschlich zu bleiben. Tim Leberecht meint, dass alles viel einfacher wäre, würden wir doch unserer romantischen Ader gegenüber etwas aufgeschlossener sein. Dafür hat er drei einfache Regeln aufgestellt und diese seinem breiten Publikum vorgestellt: 

1. Finde das Große im Kleinen

2. Behalte das Geheimnisvolle

3. Leide (ein bisschen)

Nachdem er die drei Regeln ausführlich und unterhaltend erklärt hat, ging Tim auf die Sicht des Kunden genauer ein. Denn gerade für den Kunden sollte man seine einfühlsame und vor allem romantische Art beibehalten, denn der Kunde merkt sich zwar nicht, was oder wie ihm etwas gesagt wurde - aber er erinnert sich an das Gefühl, was es in ihm ausgelöst hat. 

Wir Menschen sind, laut Tim Leberecht, nicht romantisch genug, denn dabei ist der Mix, aus Einfühlungsvermögen, Intimität und Abenteuerlichkeit, das, was die Romantik ausmacht. 

“Die Momente, in denen wir die Kontrolle verlieren, sind die Momente, in denen wir uns verlieben” - damit hat Tim Leberecht nicht ganz unrecht.

Von der Sehnsucht nach einem anderen Wirtschaftsleben…

Wie können wir im Job Erfüllung finden, Großes bewirken und uns wirklich lebendig fühlen? Tim Leberecht, einer der scharfsinnigsten Business-Vordenker, beschreibt einen fundamentalen Wertewandel in der Wirtschaft und gibt so überraschende wie zukunftsweisende Einsichten in die Gefühlswelt des Geschäftslebens. Er erweitert Business as usual…

Jonathan Harris, the founder of Cowbird, began his social narrative site as an outgrowth of his own experience birthing stories from images taken from his life. "In 2009, when Jonathan turned 30, he began a simple ritual," the Cowbird web site tells us, "taking a photo and writing a short story each day, and posting them on the Internet each night before going to sleep,"

Can writing a story be a ritual?

Writers certainly need rituals in order to keep at their work in a sustained way. The idea that writing itself could be a ritual for another purpose hadn’t occurred to me, however, until I read Tim Leberecht’s book The Business Romantic last week.

Leberecht observes how the emptiness of a writer’s notebook creates a kind of timeless moment, separated from ordinary, workaday reality. Within this liminal sphere, the writer becomes able to summon relevant symbolic bits of meaning, and craft them into a coherent whole.

"Moleskine notebooks are democratic vessels for self-expression, as well as handmade objects that serve as concrete, simple containers of our complex lives. The books provide the modern nomad with an emotional anchor, a home away from home, while at the same time serving as a device of curiosity, discovery, and exploration,” Leberecht explains. "The notebook’s blank pages feel like an opportunity to reimagine life. Every new book is an unwritten story, and it holds the romantic promise of starting all over again.”

In the writer’s notebook, then, we see a ritual object that provides for several of the primary elements of the ritual process: Separation, disorientation, and symbolic recombination.

Must the notebook be physical, with paper pages, to provide the emptiness that holds the writer’s threshold space? Not necessarily, says Leberecht. He points to Cowbird as an example of an online space for creation that transcends timeliness, encouraging its users to create stories that can be passed down to future generations, rather than just floating away on a swiftly moving stream when the issue of the moment has passed.

Cowbird’s step outside of timeliness makes it an especially good place for reflections on deeper meaning, for ritual moments of creation, but also for creations of story about ritual itself.

Considering a firsthand observation of a man undergoing an extreme ritual in Malaysia, Cowbird member Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir writes, “His back is all pierced with big hooks. A rope is tied to each hook and a big guy is pulling the ropes in the opposite direction to his every step along the way to the Batu Caves. I watch the skin of his back protruding. His eyes have been fixed on the road and when he all of a sudden swings his hand towards me with that look in his eyes I sense his deep and loud breath. Heart pounding.”

We learn from a recent experiment involving extreme ritual in Mauritius that convenience and pleasure aren’t the only routes to customer satisfaction. In the experiment, the people who participated in the most rigorous forms of sacrifice, such as walking on sharp blades and being stabbed in the face, reported the strongest positive feelings upon the ritual’s completion - and gave the largest financial donations to the local temple afterward.

Tim Leberecht: 3 ways to (usefully) lose control of your brand (by TEDtalksDirector)