The Art of Leadership

Thanks to Dr. Simon Sagmeister, I can't even look at a painting anymore without wondering what the subjects might have been thinking about organizational culture, of all things.

"When I entered the Metropolitan Museum in New York on a Saturday afternoon," said Simon, "my head was still with my work. All week, we engaged in challenging leadership issues with our clients. With one organization we worked intensively on their innovation culture. For another, we analyzed two very different department subcultures. For another, we designed a new structure for meetings and teams. For a couple of days straight, we conducted a leadership program."

I remember those sessions well. Simon is our culture partner at Science House.

"Now," Simon recalled, "in the museum, I still had all these pictures in my mind. And even more than that: Suddenly I saw leadership pictures everywhere. It was fun! I imagined what the characters on the old paintings would think. What leadership thoughts might be on their minds? This is when the art of leadership idea was born."

Which one sums up your company culture?

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Rita J King is the EVP for Business Development at Science House, a cathedral of the imagination in Manhattan focused on the art and science of doing business. She is a strategist who specializes in the development of collaborative culture by making organizational culture visible so it can be measured and transformed. She is a senior advisor to The Culture Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and a Fellow at the Salzburg Global Forum. She makes Mystery Jars, writes about the future for Fast Company and invents story architecture, characters and novel technologies for film and TV as a futurist for the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Follow@RitaJKing on Twitter.