Disrupting Industries with Poetry
On the Poet Life Podcast, you hear about our mission to build the poetry industry. We’ve shared many tips for building your poetry network, strengthening your pen, and much more. But one thing we haven’t talked about yet is how poetry can work in existing industries.
And that’s exactly what we talked about with Dr. Al-Aakhir Rogers: disrupting existing industries with poetry.
Why start with existing industries?
It may sound like the opposite of what we’re trying to do by building the poetry industry. But industries are built by disrupting what exists, so we should be doing the same thing with poetry.
“We’re talking about taking an industry and inserting poetry into it because otherwise you’d be working backwards,” Al-Aakhir explains. “I want to create poetry music or poetry arts or poetry engineering. You just need to create the substance in order to infuse poetry into it.”
Think about scenarios in your current situation where you can bring poetry to the workplace.
Would there be a good team building exercise, like writing a haiku about your day?
Maybe your HR team needs some help making the company culture message more engaging to new hires or for a town hall event.
Or maybe Marketing is working on an internal video that could use a touch of poetic language to liven it up.
It could be as simple as sharing or reading a poem for a team event or as a midweek pick-me-up.
What better way to warm people up to the up and coming poetry industry than in their own day-to-day interactions?
How industry disruption works
As the cliche goes, it starts with you.
As Al-Aakhir says, “You’ve got your expertise already. This is a soft entry. It’s easy disruption because you’re already in it.”
Wherever you’re currently working, you’re in an industry. And if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re a poet as well. So start with you. Start with your expertise in poetry and the industry you’re working in.
For example, Al-Aakhir says, “When you have an individual who might be certified in leadership and they happen to also be a poet, you can allow that person to use poetry to tap into a different rhythmic component of the company culture. … You have someone who goes into the boardroom and can start using poetry when talking about process improvement.”
That person can be you.
But first ...
Before you dive into disrupting your industry with poetry, you have to plan first. Take the time to really think about what your audience would look like for poetry in your industry. Al-Aakhir explains that this should be treated the same as if you were bringing a new product to the market.
He says, “If you have a product you want to bring to the market, you have to do a strategic market assessment to know what your target audience is. Find out if it’s even viable in a particular area and so forth.”
Think of the possibilities that could come from this effort. This easy disruption.
“Could you imagine if you did some kind of gig where you were with the employees and tasked everyone with coming up with a corporate-related haiku?” Al-Aakhir says, “You might get a corporate haiku on the website because it came from one of their own.” He then goes on to say, “You get to pull out all of the creativity within the organization. Who knows what could happen.”
So if you take the time to think through what disrupting your industry with poetry looks like in your situation, that small step could be the step you needed towards building your poetry career and building the poetry industry.
Go on and be that easy disruption. Bring poetry to an existing industry.
Be sure to watch or listen to the full episode to hear more to the conversation between Poet Life Podcast and Dr. Al-Aakhir Rogers!
Dr. Al-Aakhir Rogers is the founder of The Rogers Connection and is a compelling speaker and motivator, a master influencer and coach, and a prominent scholar/researcher. He has spoken before audiences of over 2,000, internationally in Taiwan, S. Korea, and Israel. His influence has resulted in dozens of millennials mentored/trained along with group and one-on-one coaching with collegiate and professional athletes.
