Fostering a Community

Austin Kleon, a self-described writer who draws, shares three reasons for sharing your work with others and explains how the process of sharing provides a feedback loop for more sharing and learning.


In the blog post where I recapped last year's Regents Auditors Training Day hosted by WSU, I identified Kleon as one of my principal inspirations. I shared this video with my fellow auditors, where Kleon posits three reasons for sharing one's work with photographer Chase Jarvis.

Three Reasons Why

In sum, here are Kleon's three reasons followed by his own schematic for emphasis:

  1. Becoming a documentarian of what you do has intrinsic value.
  2. Showing your work serves as self-promotion.
  3. Sharing your work can create a community around it.

Three reasons why you should show your work: 1) Process = Progress 2) Sharing > Self-Promotion 3) Feedback Loop: Share leads to learn leads to share leads to learn, etc. 

Because I don’t have an opportunity to work with many of you as often as I’d like, “showing my work” through this blog allows me to promote the role of internal audit, share items of interest, and raise awareness of risk management issues in higher education and their potential impact. My goal is to help foster a risk-intelligent community that is alert to and proactively manages risk at WSU.


You can see more of Austin Kleon's work and subscribe to his weekly newsletter at AustinKleon.com.