Our house is quite busy this week. My daughter has not only been memorizing lines for her role as Olivia in Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, but she has also been making all the costumes for the actors.
When you study Shakespeare, you soon realize how revolutionary he was, and I think creatives today can learn a lot from him.
The English language owes an outstanding debt to Shakespeare. He coined over 1,700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, combining words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising wholly original words.
In Twelfth Night, here are some of the words he created:
- Improbable Fiction
- Laugh yourself into stitches
- Out of the jaws of death
- consanguineous
- control (n.)
- dexterously
- hobnob
- lustrous
- malignancy
- to negotiate
- whirligig
Innovative
I think what creatives today can take away from Shakespeare is the importance of innovation rather than just variations within a style.
Shakespeare created “Advertising”–that is, he made the word. Likewise, photographers use the word “exposure” extensively in their craft.
At the root of his word-creation lies a problem. I believe Shakespeare was solving the problem of how to talk about life when the terms just didn’t exist. He helped the audience understand the storyline by addressing the lack of words to describe certain elements.
The key to our success is our ability to tackle new problems and develop new solutions.
“I feel your pain” – Bill Clinton.
Your business success requires your ability to have genuine empathy for a client and the challenges they are facing. Your ability to communicate that empathy is key to your success. For example, bill Clinton’s huge debate moment was when he could connect with the American people, talk about their problems, and connect with them emotionally.
After the debate, Clinton shortened this into his slogan, “I feel your pain.”
Steve Jobs, like Clinton, articulated the problem that users experience with mobile phones before introducing the iPhone.
“Business School 101 graph of the smart axis and the easy-to-use axis, phones, regular cell phones are kinda right there, they’re not so smart, and they’re – you know – not so easy to use.”
Jobs, like Clinton, then argued that Apple was the right company to tackle the problem because it had done so before.
“We solved it in computers 20 years ago. We solved it with a bit-mapped screen that could display anything we want. Put any user interface up. And a pointing device. We solved it with the mouse. Right?”
Steve Jobs’ rollouts of new products are studied today by marketing experts just like we study Shakespeare in schools.
Just watch Steve Jobs bring up problem after problem and then show how the new iPhone will handle this for you. Although this was an hour-long presentation, the audience was on the edge of their seats because he continued to introduce new problems and their solutions. The iPhone was to revolutionize how you will do life–and it did just that for our culture.
What Problems Are You Solving?
You want to be successful, so solve others’ problems. Those who rise to the top serve others.
Did you know that your problems tend to disappear when you focus on others’ issues and help solve them? The key to your happiness is to serve others and make them happy.