Reading Seth Godin's post Sprezzatura brought memories of a former manager M. A room full of people with different ideas, agendas and roles would be talk at each other not even noticing that M had come and gone from the room. Twenty minutes later, she would have the distillation of everything that she had heard including ideas of her own in a neat one page visual. Her ability to grasp any given problem no matter how far removed from her domain and expertize was nothing short of spectacular but what was even more impressive was her the ability to translate.
From the ill-formed and half-baked to the cohesive and brilliant - it did not matter what kind of idea it was, in M's hands they would come out shining like smooth, polished pebbles. Then there was the little business of putting it all together visually so that the team and her management was able to see things the same way and come way with identical understanding. She made it look completely effortless and never aimed to dazzle - the very epitome of sprezzatura.
From the ill-formed and half-baked to the cohesive and brilliant - it did not matter what kind of idea it was, in M's hands they would come out shining like smooth, polished pebbles. Then there was the little business of putting it all together visually so that the team and her management was able to see things the same way and come way with identical understanding. She made it look completely effortless and never aimed to dazzle - the very epitome of sprezzatura.
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