Pitfalls of the Creative Praxis

In case you hadn't heard, there's an gentleman out in Colorado who has postulated an interesting concept -- that of "CycloPraxis".

From the CycloPraxis site:

CycloPraxis identifies the natural working preferences of employees according to the lifecycle stage of a business.

Much has been written about evolutionary stages of firms, disruptive technologies, new ventures, and high technology marketing, but it seems that large firms continue to experience difficulty in deploying the necessary new products and opening new markets necessary for tip line growth and employees continue to wind up with assignments for which they are poorly suited. CycloPraxis explains this behavior and prescribes novel approaches.

The classic match between worker and job is function: operations, manufacturing, marketing, finance, sales, development, etc. Certainly it is important to match job function to an individual's preferences. There is another equally important dimension to the fit between workers and their jobs: cyclopraxis.

Benefits of understanding and applying cyclopraxis accrue to business and individuals alike. Discover a set of optimum working conditions for your next job; learn to interview candidates work style with new found precision; re-energize the innovation potential in your company; transition successfully from startup to successful growth; or maximize employee satisfaction in maturing markets. See our applications page for additional examples.

There are four kinds of Praxis people embody:

Author - the praxis which instigates the work

Builder - the praxis which stabilizes and standardizes the work

Capitalizer - the praxis which gets the work out there, as in marketing and promotion

Endurer - the praxis which sticks it out for the long haul and keeps everything going

Each praxis has its own special ways and orientation and idosyncracies, which allows the person of that praxis to be effective in that role. Unfortunately, the praxes don't always intersect well, and there's in inherent conflict in their interactions.

Now, while this may not seem especially pertinent to independent publishing, I'm convinced that it explains why so many writers and artists have a hard time promoting their work.

Quite simply, when you're creating a work of art, you're active as an Author. But then when it comes time to get the work out, you need to act as a Builder. And when the work is on the market, you have to switch to Capitalizer.

The difficulty is that people typically act in one praxis, and they don't move smoothly through the others. So, for an Author to become a Capitalizer, is a very tall order, indeed. Even an Author becoming a Builder can be a challege. But an Author becoming an Endurer? Good luck!

Therein lies, I believe, much of the conflict surrounding the struggles of artists, their trials and tribulations, and the reasons a lot of independent publishers and artists aren't as successful as they'd like to be.

More on this later. This is a very significant piece of the puzzle around creation and independent promotion, and it bears closer scrutiny over the coming weeks.