Life at the top means constant tension. The board wants numbers, the press wants command, the team wants care. How do you keep the tension from turning into a trap?
Let your power play it sideways.
Encounter Patricia von Papstein, the Dadaist Psychologist. She brings you into contact with Dada, the practised art of not getting cornered.
Patricia von Papstein lets Dadaism and Psychology flirt and fight in her, daring cheek and gravity out of each other.
The Psychologist in her is clinically and organizationally trained to read people. The Dadaist in her enjoys teasing tyrants. She has exercised power herself and knows how good it feels.
Her attention goes straight for what’s easily overlooked: the framework beneath opinions, the shifts within change, the nuance in how decisions take shape. Unafraid of depth, she finds the edges easy to take. That’s where she picks her fights.
A childlike first smooch for whatever turns up unexpectedly – that’s where her humour kicks in. A shot of sensuality, the jolt where touch hits thought and meaning gets under the skin, makes her savour the lust for life.
Over a hundred years ago, artists across Europe refused to fall for war propaganda and the power structures behind it. They called themselves Dadaists. They aligned thinking and feeling, body and voice, the absurd and the urgent.
Dada(ism) once seized art, not the balance sheet. Now it boards the boardroom. What makes the move into business so irresistible: no fear of wrong decisions, of tyrants, of things that don’t add up.
What do executives gain when Dada comes on board? In the boardroom, we tend to bask in our own light. It feels safe – and that is when we overlook the dangers: the snap decisions, the numbers no one questioned.
Dada slips a banana peel under its own power, before anyone else can. Self-irony gives power somewhere to slip, and leaves executives with a nose for trouble that’s hard to beat.
Dada savours the gaps in every certainty, the way you savour a good Emmentaler: the holes are the best part. No rush to fill them. Executives who enjoy the gap stay resolute, and able to act.
Dada kisses what goes unspoken, in ourselves and around the table, without prying it open. Executives who can do that are dangerous, in the best way.
Sleep well, boardroom. Dada won’t.
TRICK & CARE is Patricia’s take on business: the thrill of stepping out of line, with the nerve to own what comes after.
By playing it sideways, TRICK & CARE throws emotional traps off balance.
Patricia works with these Sideways every day.
Dada Charms are the force that seduces business out of its dull and narrow corners.
They trick the rulebooks with childlike glee.
They aim with a precise blade, and care for the mess they make.
They fear no pecking order.
Read where they land in Patricia’s essays.
Want to see and hear Patricia in action, before you meet her incognito for your own company? Try Boardroom Off the Record, an exclusive get-together.
Imagine the pleasure of discovering your own Dada in strategy. It isn’t your company, so you play more freely. The big calls are fair game, and so are the unnoticed ones others are making right now. With a few accomplices, behind a closed door, you take them on. Then: an ensemble of your twists and Patricia’s Dada.
