Writing a manifesto

A manifesto is a public statement or declaration of an organisation’s or individual’s policies, beliefs or intention. I don’t think I’d ever thought much about the word. It always conjured up images of force, harshness and dictatorships. If I’d ever done one of those word association tests, then I probably would have responded to ‘manifesto’ with ‘communist’.

In 2009 my eyes and mind were opened a bit wider about the concept of ‘manifesto’. One of the installations in the children’s exhibition of the Optimism exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, was a piece by artist Emily Floyd called Make a Manifesto. Here visitors were exposed to the concept of a range of international artist’s manifestos. I was intrigued by this notion of a manifesto that guided the practices of groups of artists as well as individuals.

About six months ago I came across Seth Godin’s Bootscrappers manifesto, and then last week I discovered Clare Lancaster’s Manifesto for women in business and I’ve kinda become hooked. So a manifesto for business, not just artists and regimes?

What does it all mean? There are so many how-to, get-focused and be-the-one mantras shuttling around the internet. They’re packaged as designed images, ebooks and slide presentations.  Quite honestly, don’t I/we already know that stuff? You know, the ‘be the change you want to see‘, ‘if it be, it is up to me‘, ‘every journey starts with a first step‘ etc injections of idea/motivational drugs.

Yeah. They may be a big of a drug. But I think I’m I’m drawn to the idea of creating a manifesto for my own business cause I see it in a similar way to my business’s vision statement or a way to express ideas about how I want/hope my business operates. I was more than a little inspired yesterday by Anita Heiss’ post about using a business/life-coach and Geraldine Starr’s tips about working towards success.

Perhaps too, I’m become more drawn to the idea of printing these out and hanging them around my workspace so that I have them in my eye-line when I need them (instead of stuck someone in my hard-drive).

There are days when I get so bogged down in details and become so overwhelmed that I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing or where I’m supposed to be going.

So I’m embarking on a manifesto creating journey. I’ll let you know how it goes… and, it appears I’m not alone – check out the Manifesto Project

Have you ever thought about a manifesto? Do you surround yourself with positive messages?

2 thoughts on “Writing a manifesto”

  1. Thanks Jo! I wonder if it it did. Thanks. Of course, since I wrote the post, I've been terribly slack and done nothing about it. I tend to do things in bursts. Thanks for the good wishes though and I'll be sure to let you know what I come up with.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *