I need to send out thanks to my friend Ulrich for the inspiration for this post. Uli is a friend that I met in Brazil on a trip sometime back. He had some really amazing electronic gizmos and gadgets that made me quite jealous. While we were talking about his electronics preferences the conversation shifted, as it often does to other topics. One of the topics we touched on was our reading preferences, and the types of books that we both drew inspiration from. I mentioned that I like to read, and prefer to read a broad range of literary genres and topics. Uli too likes to read but said he usually keeps his reading centered on business and management oriented books and materials. Those happen to be one of the specific genres that I for the most part avoid. It was interesting that we had such divergent approaches to the items that we read, and the information we applied to our business responsibilities.

As I have noted in the past, many of the items I have read seemed initially to be outside of a direct association with business and management. This isn’t by chance. I have read many management articles and books. However in doing so, from my own point of view, I started to notice many similarities to the tenets covered, and only slight variations in the applications of them. There were only so many ways to dress up the ideas of the need to be flexible, that things are going to change and how to deal with these inevitabilities.

That type of management book similarity has sent me off in a couple of different directions when it came to reading and applying what I read to business. One direction I went was into the past to see where many of these “new and improved – yet strangely similar” business strategies came from. I have covered this topic several times in the past. Remember, business, commerce, and strategy has been around almost as long as humans have been around. I have found that sometimes the best books about business are not actually about business. If I need true specific business management input or strategy I go to the four texts that I see as the basis for just about everything in business management and leadership that has been written since. They are:

The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This is a twenty five hundred year old text written by a pre-china general that never lost an engagement that is still used in military academies around the world, and in many business schools.
The Prince by Machiavelli. A sixteenth century political and strategic treatise by an Italian diplomat and political theorist.
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. A text on focus, adaptation and martial arts by a seventeenth century Japanese swordsman.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian. A book of maxims for dealing with the real world written by a seventeenth century Spanish monk.

These are not the books for everyone. These are just the primary books that I turn to when I need a jumping off point for inspiration on a specific business or related issue. I continue to reread them and usually pick up something new every time I do.

I recommended them to Uli. We will see if he reads them and agrees with my assessment of them, or if he continues to buy and read the latest derivative management strategy books that are on the market. I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as he is enjoying and finding value in what he is reading.

The other direction that I go is to read just about anything but management books. This covers the literary spectrum from magazine articles to Blogs to Science Fiction novels to Classic Literature. Much of it is not directly applicable to anything associated with business and leadership, but occasionally there are some interesting aspects that present themselves. Whenever I per chance happen to make one of these unexpected business leadership synaptic connections with something that I have read I try to capture it specifically and share it here. Hence the idea of inspiration as the topic for this piece.

Uli on the other hand noted that the source of business inspiration for him came from business oriented literature, be it articles or books. If this works for him, then great. There seems to be a never ending supply of new management and business oriented articles and books every day for him to read. If they provide inspiration to some of their readers then there must be some value in them.

Inspiration for me is a strange element. I have very seldom had it strike me metaphorically from the blue. I normally get it by recognizing analogies, connections and parallels to seemingly unrelated events and topics. I look for stories of success or leadership in seemingly unrelated fields and then wonder how it might be applicable to business. This approach has led me to better understand the leadership secrets of Captain Kirk from the Star Trek shows and movies, as well as how Jerry Seinfeld applied himself to his craft as a writer to such a successful extent. Along a non-literary line, it has also taught me how to deal with and negotiate with my soon to be fifteen year old son when it is time for him to mow the yard. Success can be achieved from many different directions.

The point here is to start recognizing what keys your specific moments of inspiration. What are you doing, what are you reading, who are you talking to when you have your best ideas? More importantly how do you recognize them when they occur and how do you capture them? There is something about those environments that triggered the creative process. A little self analysis and cognitive association will go a long way here.

I have never been able to innovate because I have read a book on how to innovate. I have read many other books on many other topics that I cannot do, even though I have read about them. I have read about time and space travel and even though I might like to try it I don’t think I can do it just because I have read a book about it. On the other hand, I did learn about physics and differential calculus from books, but I also had a reasonably highly skilled mentor / professor to help me there. Almost all the innovations that I have been involved in have come from trying to apply something new from outside the accepted business norm, to the business norm. That and a significant amount of stubbornness in refusing to listen while everyone else patiently explained to me why my new idea would never work.

It is a significant step going from knowing where you can hope to find inspiration to actually doing something with the inspiration you found.

I also think that part of the reason that I have been able to draw business inspiration from such a diverse literary catalog stems from the fact that I genuinely like to read. I enjoy books. That may be the key to finding inspiration, at least for me, and probably others. I seem to draw my inspiration from relating the things I like to do, like reading to the other things I enjoy in business. I would think that this might be the case for others as well. Conversely, I would guess if you dislike something enough it may be a source of inspiration in how to avoid or improve it. I’ll have to think about that one a little more.

Inspiration doesn’t seem to be a well that I can just wonder over to and dip a bucket in and come out with a new idea. It is more of an understanding of how things work and how I relate to them, and putting myself in the positions where there has been a proven tendency to find inspiration, and then being aware enough to recognize it when it hits. It seems to be the doing of something, possible fully unrelated to the topic that allows you to form the new associations to the old issues.

For me anyway, that does not usually involve the reading of the latest management self help, or how to innovate book. In this case it came from talking to a friend out those books.