Leadership Arts 1: Novel Beginnings

The Lost Art of Good Beginnings

Welcome to Leadership Arts: a place where we, at Thompson Harrison, think about what – and how – we can learn from the humanities. From writing and painting to sculpture and dance, we traverse disciplines to find new ways of thinking to provide insight for those working in business or government.

Fittingly, our inaugural post takes on beginnings. We live in a busy world. We rush from one thing to the next. We hurry tasks along.  We fail to plan entrances. Process and forward-thinking are vital, but we can easily neglect or forget the importance of a good quality start: how to shape a proper beginning, and how to set the rhythm, tone, and character for what’s to come. Too often, we hurtle straight to task and forget the benefits of anticipation, curiosity, and intrigue.

At TH, we take starts seriously. So, when taking on new projects, we place a great emphasis on getting off on the right foot – a crucial step for making good progress.

It’s so easy to rush into project and fumble the beginning. Doing so derails the whole thing – and you’ll never know what could have been. Take your time when starting: get to know everyone, what are the values at work, what are the worries? If you make time for this, the project will always run more smoothly.   Good beginnings are hugely efficient.

On bigger scale, think of how important the roots of a company are. It really matters where you come from – it’s how you define your culture. Look at Apple: the name came from Steve Job’s time working in an orchard. Using this humble beginning for the name and the logo, gave those tech giants a certain relatable minimalism that can still be felt in the branding today.    

The lesson here is: you can’t get a good result without a good beginning. Take your time, lay the groundwork, and prepare as thoughtfully as possible. Start as you mean to go on: with meaning.

What can we learn from the humanities?

Want to run a marathon? Better limber up first. Attending a concert? Let’s hope the instruments are tuned. Starting a new leadership programme? Get to know the aims, concerns, and company values involved – establish shared principles, understand the people.

The same goes in the world of literature. If you’re going to sit down with a 500-page tome (or even a zippy novella) you want to know you’re in good hands. Novel beginnings (pun intended) therefore have several purposes: to hook you into the story, to set the tone of what’s to come, to create an engaging – or even surprising – atmosphere. With this in mind, take a look these lines:

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

I mean, that’s some opening. We start with one simple, emphatic word: ‘London’. That’s it. That’s the whole opening sentence. But it does more than give a location: London, here, is an atmosphere. It’s quite literally a grammar unto itself. And through this, it becomes more than a word: it becomes a sensation, a feeling, a world where fantastic things can happen.

It is the perfect combination of playfulness and darkness: an atmosphere once surprising and, like the weather, ‘implacable’. It sets the whole tone with a prehistoric, urban, muddy thud.

Who wrote this?

So who is this master of the dark starts? That’s right: it’s Charles Dickens. These are the first lines to his mammoth (or should I say Megalosaurus) novel, Bleak House.

Lots of famous authors have made famous beginnings (George Orwell, George Eliot, Jane Austen), but Dickens is probably the master. You might think, as well, of the opening to A Christmas Carol: ‘Marley was dead: to begin with.’ Spooky or what?

There are a couple of reasons Dickens was so good at making compelling starts. First, he worked for a long time as a journalist, so he knows the importance of a good, strong hook: a snappy, elegant start will echo through whatever comes next. He adds in just enough mystery to create intrigue, but never leaves you confused.

Second, many of Dickens’s novels were published chapter by chapter in journals and newspapers (very different to the great big books we lug around now). So he had to keep his reader deeply connected to the story even when they weren’t reading. They had to be thinking ‘What’s going to happen next?’ How will that resolve? Will the Megalosaurus return?’ Through this, readers become more intimately involved: they start to care about the story.

With an effective beginning, you spark attentiveness; you ignite imagination; you leave us wanting more.

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