The Elizabeth Bishop Framework
What a poet can teach the drinks business
Restraint is a competitive advantage. Consider poet Elizabeth Bishop.
Over a brilliant 50-year career, she published only 101 poems.
Marvel at the math: that’s an average of just two poems per year. Yet her unrelenting focus, rigorous discipline, and absolute refusal to rush substandard work won her both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. 🏆
Drinks leaders and entrepreneurs could transform their businesses by acting more like Bishop.
It’s only when you aim for quality over proliferation, things grow (and, oddly, proliferate).
I’m not just talking about liquid quality, but:
Relationship quality 🤝
Process quality 🏗️
Decision quality 🔀
Data quality 📊
Brand quality 🥫1
Customer and Consumer quality 🛒
Here’s a link to a favorite of mine, Bishop’s “One Art.”
Which I would argue is directly correlated to it’s simplicity and elegance. As Bishop herself wrote, “The greatest challenge is to try and express difficult thoughts in plain language.”