Patrick McCrae, CEO ARTIQ: Leap Before You Look Certain Change: The Leadership Collection

Patrick founded ARTIQ, a leading art consultancy, in 2009 to bridge the gap between the art and business worlds and to promote a fair deal for artists. He and his team work with businesses to embed creativity into their culture and to harness the great power of art. He has been named ‘Creative Industries Entrepreneur of the Year’.

I have known Patrick for a great many years. I know him to be ambitious, benevolent and a values driven leader. COVID has not been kind to workplace and hospitality biased businesses. Patrick has had the unenviable task of furloughing staff, whilst continuing to win and deliver work with a reduced team.

You will find him to be charming, wise and kind.

Picking up on the strong leadership themes we’re seeing as a thread through these episodes.

What we learned in this episode:


Firstly - a strong culture, built before the pandemic, is weathering the storm well
Also we see again here that a strategy of comms, comms and more comms(!) is a critical factor in keeping a team buoyant.
An accelerated and regular board collaboration is required to make swift adaptive decisions.
I LOVED that he didn’t have a business leader to quote as leadership inspiration - W.H Auden will do nicely! The poem is below...

Please do check out Queer Frontiers: https://www.queerfrontiers.co.uk/ - the pieces are outstanding and support artists who are sadly slipping through the governmental support net.

Keep your eye on Patrick - he’s regularly in the press making big noise for culture for it’s importance. It’s at the epicentre of what makes us human. And, as an ex-actor myself, I couldn’t agree more.

You can find him: 

https://artiq.co/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjmccrae/

and you can find me:

certainchangepodcast@gmail.com

https://www.instagram.com/certainchangepodcast/

https://www.kinestheticacoaching.com/



Leap Before You Look

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

-- W. H. Auden (December 1940)