Responsibility Art the Why and You In Leading and Managing: 450 Degrees of Thinking, Action, and Outcome Creation

By Dr. Mike Lewis

Responsibility art is a connecting of ideas, thoughts, personal research, and real-world applications that identify and celebrate the actions and intersections of effective leadership and management. Many books emphasize the idea or creative spark that initiates the actions of leaders and managers. However, the spark is not enough.
The problems of our world are solved billions of times every day. Just ask the next person you see how to fix the economy, political process, or child hunger. You are likely to receive a litany of answers, a basket of ideas, or enough sparks to light a dark room. Then ask that person what they are doing to make their ideas reality. It’s likely that your conversation will end.
Responsibility art is action at the intersection of the why and the you of leading and managing. Responsibility art takes the problem-solving sparks, all those glorious creative ideas, and acts to make them reality. Action is a filter between thinkers and responsibility artists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684705436

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LEWIS

Copyright © 2019 Phillip M. Lewis.

Interior Graphics/Art Credit: Dr. Mike Lewis

Author Photo by SimplyPhotosNC.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0542-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0544-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0543-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906481

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 08/13/2019

To my beautiful wife, Meg, the strongest person I know.

Thank you, dear.

And to Jackie, Buddy, and Opie, our best-est lap warmers ever.

Ball?

To Those Who Act

Responsibility art is a connecting of ideas, thoughts, personal research, and real-world applications that identify and celebrate the actions and intersections of effective leadership and management. Many books emphasize the idea or creative spark that initiates the actions of leaders and managers. However, the spark is not enough.

The problems of our world are solved billions of times every day. Just ask the next person you see how to fix the economy, political process, or child hunger. You are likely to receive a litany of answers, a basket of ideas, or enough sparks to light a dark room. Then ask that person what they are doing to make their ideas reality. It’s likely that your conversation will end.

Responsibility art is action at the intersection of the why and the you of leading and managing. Responsibility art takes the problem-solving sparks, all those glorious creative ideas, and acts to make them reality. Action is a filter between thinkers and responsibility artists. Action is also the extra bit that goes beyond 360-degree input, ideas, and thinking to add 90 degrees of doing—thus, the 450 degrees of responsibility art.

We celebrate big ideas—but only after a responsibility artist acts to bring them to us in some real-world form. The idea alone is not enough; it never has been.

Preface

I chose to self-publish to encourage those in my community with something to share. Self-publishing is simpler today with platforms for rent, e-books, online business forms, and many other services to guide you through the process. However, as with any responsible act, simple does not mean easy.

Doing a responsible thing has nothing to do with how easy it is, the complexity required, or the measurement of your effort. Sharing these insights is one part of my responsibility art, and self-publishing ensures the broadest-possible reach through unquestioned ownership and distribution flexibility.

I chose not to put The in this book’s title. Responsibility is neither one thing nor one act. Nor is it one instance. Art is neither one thing nor one act. Neither is it one instance. Adding a The to the title of this book might alter the perception that responsibility art is a single thing. As you will see, it is not one anything.

I wrote most of the value description below more than ten years before writing the first word of this book. I consider the words below to be the seed that grew into this more fully formed understanding and expression of responsibility, what I have termed responsibility art. While the word responsibility never appeared in the original thinking, responsibility is woven between the lines and buried in the ideas. This book exposes that responsibility and identifies a very specific responsible party, the responsibility artist.

Finally, as a responsibility artist, I hope this book spawns untold numbers of conversations, inspires a million new ideas, and invites a thousand new books, papers, or conferences to further expand the ways we understand and practice responsibility art.

Genesis

The Value of Every Worker

Workers are my heroes. Many people associate the word hero with sports, television, or movie celebrities. I believe those are just people who got lucky. Of course, the athletes have to practice and actors have to train, but they still got lucky because our society values them. If no one paid to watch a movie, there would be no movie stars.

Work is an opportunity to put your name on something bigger than yourself. Work connects you to people, places, projects, goals, and risks that you would never experience without the work. Work is part of who we are. Work is in our DNA.

As a leader, a manager, a teacher, and an employee, I have shared in the work lives of thousands of people. I have seen them become parents for the first time and come back to work as totally new people. I have seen them get married and divorced, lose their parents, adopt children, volunteer for any number of organizations, and generally live their lives. Sure, this sounds ordinary to many of us, so what is heroic about these people? They do it every day!

They come into work tired because a child was sick all night. They come to work sick themselves because they do not want to let their employer down and have to be told it is okay to go home. They come into work wearing casts or with stitches, and they even come to work after hearing they have only six months to live. These responsible workers will come into work knowing they will not see another birthday. These are the things that make them my heroes.

As a leader, I have looked into the eyes of an employee diagnosed with a terminal illness and asked, Why are you still here? I have asked employees who returned to work the day after burying a parent, Why are you here? I have asked new mothers longing to get home and hold their baby, Why are you here?

The answer is almost always the same. "This is my job!"

Facing end of life, the beginning of life, and nearly anything in between, my heroes, our everyday workers, want to work. "This is my job" cannot be measured, metered, or outsourced. And as the pay, benefits, and work opportunities continue to shrink in America, I want all workers to know that someone thinks you are all heroes. This I believe.

Responsibility and Responsibility Art

This book explores those who lead and manage to propose that responsibility—and the actions driven by responsibility artists—is the link among effective leaders or managers, the organizations they serve, and the employees within those organization. Responsibility art is the why that unites all of us to create high-performing organizations.

Many books today work diligently to separate leadership and management into individual silos. They drive to apply mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive thinking to demonstrate that leadership and management are different in kind. However, in doing so they create a view that is too narrowly focused for