The Change Artist brings Carla Rieger's powerful recipe for mastering self change into a compelling story format.
The story begins with the troubled relationship between an adult daughter and her dying father.
The novel, The Change Artist, explores among other things the challenges of being an innovative leader that has integrity.
People attracted to leading change are often revolutionary types who have an axe to grind, who regularly break down old ways of being to create something new, who are brilliant at envisioning new ideas and have a charismatic way of expressing their ideas. Tied to integrity, accountability and sustainability, these kinds of people have brought forth important change throughout history. If that vision lacks integrity and sustainability, and there is no accountability in place, then invariably that change will be unsuccessful at best, or severely destructive at worst, as in the case of Enron or the Nazi regime.
Change Artist leaders such as Gandhi or Steve Jobs of Apple tend to have a softer but more sustainable approach. The difference could be likened to the tortoise versus the hare.
Revolutionary leaders tend to take a radical stance on change, demolishing the old status quo without buy in from stakeholders. Change Artist leaders tend to marry tradition with innovation to find the best of both worlds, including others in the decision-making.
Revolutionaries often act in covert ways to bring down the old status quo, whereas Change Artists keep lines of communication open so that the process is transparent to those who will be affected by the change.
Revolutionaries tend to get alienated or marginalized from the channels of power that could ultimately support them. Change Artists work to win people over to their ideas through including diverse points of view.
Revolutionaries tend to focus on concepts and visions to the exclusion of practicalities. Change Artists tend to ground their visionary concepts in case studies and practical terms appropriate for the context.
Revolutionaries are often driven by a desire to be recognized as the architect of a new vision. Change Artists are driven by the desire to let the vision grow organically in a way that bests serves all those concerned.
Revolutionaries want to see the change happen in a fast and exciting way. Change Artists want to see the change happen in a way that keeps stakeholders engaged and on board.
Revolutionaries are known to disrespect and diminish those who still value the existing status quo and will actually sabotage what they value. Change Artists explore diverse points of view to find the overlap of values between all those concerned. They also stick around to see the idea implemented, using persistence through the debugging phase.
In short, Change Artists bring forth the kind of change that has integrity and sustainability. Often you will find that a Change Artist is someone who has tried the Revolutionary approach and learned from it. They then used that experience to ground them into leading a change that is sustainable.
Carla Rieger has written a compelling story, inspired by true events in her own life.
After her father’s death, Carla Rieger found the journal she had once given him and discovered he had filled it with details about the secrets of his past.
This discovery became the catalyst for The Change Artist, a semi-autobiographical journey of discovery, in which Fran, the heroine, uncovers her father’s two hidden lives, discovers a sister that she never knew she had, and frantically searches for the truth.
Rieger has mastered the art of the page-turner; as the narratives of different characters intersect and diverge, the reader is compelled to find out what happens next. Written in a style influenced by Dan Millman and Dan Brown, The Change Artist is a mythic journey that blends fiction with truth, offering lessons in creativity, spirituality and history along the way.
The Change Artist is Rieger’s first novel and a winner of the Books & Authors 2009 Award for “Fiction Inspired by True Events.” It is also a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards and a finalist in the USA Book News Awards.
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Linda Naiman, founder of Creativity at Work, is known internationally for pioneering arts-based learning in organizations. Linda leads retreats, facilitates creative strategy meetings, speaks at business conferences, and conducts workshops on creativity and innovation in North America, Europe and Asia. She also coaches leaders, managers, and artists on finding creative solutions and achieving their goals.
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To get a copy of the book click here.
Change leaders can become targets. Often the person who suggests a new idea gets shot down by people who are uncomfortable with change. There are plenty of examples throughout history of people who stood for change getting assassinated or vilified. It’s no wonder we keep our mouths shut.
There are inherent forces within nature to create, to stay the same for a while, then to destroy. It’s the cycle of life that also affects people. There are times in a person’s life (and times in history) when we need to release the old to make room for something new. This transition can trigger turmoil as the energy of one fights against the other, like two chemicals in a test tube. Finally, the two become one and a third entity emerges. The Phoenix rises from the ashes of the old. The new tree grows from the dead trunk of a mother tree.
If we keep our mouths shut when it’s clear a change is needed there can be negative consequences. Stifling your creative ideas, can undermine your own well being but also those you serve. Leading change comes with risks, but if that is your path then life tends to mysteriously show up to help. Choosing the path of a change artist requires you to have certain habits so that you can be as resilient as possible.
Here is Carla Rieger talking about The Change Artist, a novel about the perils of denying your creativity. It explores one woman’s path of reconnecting to her creative heritage and habits she needed to become a leader of change.
The top-down hierarchies of power throughout history are starting to break down with the advent of such things as the Internet that creates a more democratic process of contributing creatively to society. It used to be that only a few music producers chose what music we would all get to listen to, or a few art galleries which art we could see, or a few movie producers which movies to see, or a few publishing houses which books we could read.
But now, artists of all kinds can self produced and self distribute via technology and the Internet, which means no more middle man. The end user decides rather than one person at the top of the hierarchy. It’s a rare time in history. For most of history only a very few people in society got to be creative and they were usually offering that creativity in service of a patron who had a specific agenda. Now people all over the world can be making art for art’s sake and we get to enjoy a wide diversity of perspectives .
Yet,some people still live with the idea that being creative is dangerous. Indeed, creativity often threatens the existing status quo or structure. Movies open minds to new ideas. Books excite the imagination with new possibilities, new forms of dance help people embody a new way of being, and innovative business systems contribute to the evolution of society.
Here is Carla Rieger talking about her new novel, The Change Artist, on Studio 4. This story covers lesser known stories about World War II. It explores the dilemma many people face throughout history between being creative and maintaining the status quo. From present day Vancouver to Nazi Germany of the past, to the Sahara Desert and to a band of carnival entertainers.
In an era when only the “creatively resilient” among us are surviving it helps to remember that all of us have this ability. To be a Change Artist is simply to reconnect to the archetype of the artist within us all. As Pablo Picasso once said, “”Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Or, as David Whyte says, “When you neglect your creative energies they work away at you and almost blacken the inside of you like creosote. One of the first steps is to simply create a sense of spaciousness, to give you room to take flight.”
Here is a TV commercial you have probably seen from the 1990’s called “Think Different”. The concepts bears revisiting because this is a time in history when we all need to recapture the artist within to reinvent our personal lives, our work lives and our organizations.
This was an advertising slogan and TV commercial created for Apple Computer. The one-minute commercial features black and white video footage of significant historical people of the past, including (in order):
Albert Einstein
Bob Dylan
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Richard Branson
John Lennon (with Yoko Ono)
R. Buckminster Fuller
Thomas Edison
Muhammad Ali
Ted Turner
Maria Callas
Mahatma Gandhi
Amelia Earhart
Alfred Hitchcock
Martha Graham
Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog)
Frank Lloyd Wright
Pablo Picasso
The commercial ends with an image of a young girl, Shaan Sahota, opening her closed eyes, as if to see the possibilities before her.
“Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Creativity and innovation without integrity is, by universal law, unsustainable. We see this throughout history with investors like Bernie Madoff, or companies like Enron, or political leaders like Hitler. They impress people at first with their “innovative” way of changing things for the better. But if the innovation isn’t based in integrity then it cannot be sustained and eventually the leaders self-destruct and those that follow them lose out.
The Change Artist within us all is the archetype of the dreamweaver. It’s the part of us that can re-program our virtual reality movie. However, have you noticed that it doesn’t always create a rosy picture of health, wealth and happiness? Sometimes The Change Artist attracts challenge, loss and hardship into your life. Maybe these are opportunities to grow, to learn how to live more in harmony with universal laws, to make ourselves right with the world again. You cannot learn about integrity unless you transgress it from time to time and most humans have done that in big ways or small at some time in their lives. Like a child learning how to walk, we take a step and fall, then get back up and try again.
The suspense novel, The Change Artist, was recently reviewed by Clare Swindlehurst in her Blue Archipelago book blog in the UK. The novel explores how three people in three different generations of the same family deal with change, creativity and integrity in their own lives. The story goes back and forth through time and spans from the early 1930’s to the 21st century, and is inspired by true events of those who have suffered great loss but then found their way back to creativity with integrity.
