On Leaks: An Allegory of Van Gogh and Batteries
Please see author’s note at end of post. The context of this post is a twitter thread which you can read here.
In college I enrolled in a class, History of Modern Art. I enjoyed the class immensely and without a doubt it proved that those pass/fail classes you are forced to take outside your major can also be a super important part of your college experience. The class was a survey of art from 1851–1951. What was most memorable for me was not just the knowledge gained, but the experience of learning from someone who poured their heart into teaching.
The professor started the class on the first day opening herself up to ridicule in front of a bunch of folks no doubt enrolled in the class to satisfy a requirement. She talked about the power of art, the way art shaped history, and how much art meant to her personally. The class format was intense. About fifty of us met in a very old lecture hall with a steep rake to a big desk at the bottom. It was dark. The professor would go through a hundred slides (in a carousel if you can remember those). She did not rattle off facts or analyze brush strokes but the focus was on the passion, the feeling, and the commitment the artist had to the work (the impressionists had quite a tough time gaining street cred for their work which is why the class started with the Salon des Refusés).
The professor was often emotional and always deeply involved in each work she clearly put great care into selecting for us to talk about. She felt that to get the most out of class you had to be there in person, absorb the environment, and give it your all. She promised to pour her heart and soul into the class and share with us her passion for the work. She only asked for one thing in exchange, which is that we come to class to share the passion, and not to tape record the lecture or try to take notes, but to experience the art. That seemed like a fair deal, since after all I had 5 other classes where I got writer’s cramp from switching colors on my 4-color Bic.
About half way through the semester we were studying Van Gogh. It turns out that the professor, who had already demonstrated her passion for the French Impressionists, was a big time expert and fan of his having just written a book for a really big 1980’s exhibit in New York on post-Impressionists. To say she was really into him would be an understatement. Her passion was evident from the minute we walked into class — filling the lecture hall with anticipation.
We had journeyed through Starry Night. We were exhausted as she gave her all talking about the work, Saint-Rémy, and so on. Amazingly she had more to give. On the screen appeared Van Gogh’s famous Self Portrait and then followed with talk about his ear, mental disease and so on. Tears flowed from the professor’s eyes. Then all of a sudden…
Crash.
Bang.
Roll. Roll. Roll. Roll.
Clank.
The crash and bang were from a tape recorder (analog) falling from a desk and the rolling was four AA batteries making their way down the long rake of the auditorium, landing at the feet of the stunned professor.
Silence overwhelmed the room. Anxiety replaced anticipation.
Composing herself, the distraught professor lifted the batteries and held them in her clenched fist, clearly at a loss for words, looking up to the darkened class. After a pause that seemed like an eternity all she said was, “you broke a promise” as if to say that she was doing all she could to uphold her part.
Of course the class continued for the remainder of the semester. Things weren’t quite the same. We all knew and felt how our class had let her down. But more importantly what happened was that a member of the class missed the point — the point was to give your passion and commit to the class, not to try to memorize some words, ascertain a few facts to be learned, or merely game some system for a grade.
I thought about that class a lot today as I read a blog on ZDNet that contained direct quotes from a post on this blog.
— Steven
My inbox is always open.
This post was written in August 2007 and originally appeared in public in the book One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making by Sinofsky and Iansiti. The post has not been modified from how it originally appeared internally at Microsoft.
