The Campbell Academy Blog (126)

The mind of an artist

It was years ago that Seth Godin recommended Austin Kleon's book Steal Like an Artist, and a generation of people who follow Seth Godin read the book and understood and developed a mindset like an artist where it was absolutely fine to take someone else's work and to modify it and change it and try to improve it and put it out there.

That's what artists do; it's what artists have always done.

The other side of the artist's mentality, though, is that they usually (more often than not) celebrate the success of other artists.

And so, it's not that artists see themselves in competition trying to sell paintings to the same people; it's that they know that what they create is individual and brilliant and there is enough for everyone, and so they move along like that, and when one of their own has success, they celebrate it.

And so, I've thought about this a lot because that is not the same thing that happens in our profession and in most cases.

It's not the case that dentists celebrate other dentists' success.

It's the case that they feel that they are in competition with other people.

They also do not share, and they keep everything close by in case they give a 'competitive advantage' to someone else.

They're not fantastic at celebrating the success of their colleagues at all. Generally, when someone puts something out there, all they want to do is copy it and try to do it for themselves to make money instead of standing back and revelling in how fantastic some of their friends and colleagues actually are.

I was struck by this recently on a visit to a lab (perhaps more about this later).

I was surrounded by people who were extraordinary and exceptional and so dedicated to their craft, but also to innovation and improvement and generally making things better.

People are happy to share at all points so that you would take something away and make it better for the patients you look after.

I wondered what had happened to dentistry to make it not like that anymore, and I also wondered why lots of dentists think they're artists but feel they are unable to act like artists.