I’ve considered this in my own work of writing, editing, and advising on information design and data visualization, but a few new books and, surprisingly, a TV show have helped me crystallize why those of us in business need to learn from the arts—instead of being allergic to the idea. Last point first: The allergy stems from a misunderstanding of the artistic process. Most of us think of it in divine terms: mythic and miraculous, thus neither instructive nor useful. The artist ponders until lightning strikes, and out comes Gatsby or Guernica.

In The Work of Art, the former New York magazine editor Adam Moss acknowledges the power of that notion but then deletes it. His book mixes interviews of more than three dozen artists (writers, painters, composers, comedians, designers) with images of their work and, crucially, their work in progress. We see sketches that inform Frank Gehry’s whirly architecture; pages of Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics, well worked over; and even a text message thread in which the music producer Thomas Bartlett solicits collaborators. This is arduous, disheveled, iterative work—as messy as building a business case.

The creatives also talk about problem solving, communication, and collaboration—skills I’m told are very helpful in workplaces, too. So you start to see that you can learn from art and artists. What they’re doing isn’t so different from what you’re trying to do. Hell, Kara Walker even shares part of the PowerPoint she presented to the group that commissioned a sculpture from her. Art is basically product development. Or, as one composer says, it’s “more like being a carpenter than like being God….What we do is a craft.” The product—whether it’s a mural, a song, a dance, or a joke—may seem miraculous, but its creation is not. It was born from the same effort you might put in to find mastery in your own work.

Mastery is the obsession of the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik in The Real Work. He excavates seven traits that define the highest achievement, from performance to intention to action and more, and tells moving stories from realms as varied as baking, dancing, boxing, and driving. In an engaging set piece, Gopnik explains what magicians mean when they talk about “the real work”: the “accumulated craft, savvy, and technical mastery that makes a magic trick great.” It’s not who does the trick first, or who does it best, necessarily, but who did the work to master it.

In delving into how hard it is to do the real work in any pursuit or profession, he exposes why mastery is elusive. When he describes the dizzying complexity of putting on a Broadway musical, for example, it’s not hard to apply his description to any business context: “A seven-person creative team of equals is called war.” And yet, that’s what it takes to launch a show, and people do it because when they nail it, the thrill is unparalleled—and what they’ve put into the world matters. “We all know the real work in whatever field it is we’ve mastered,” Gopnik writes. “It’s shorthand…for the difference between accomplishment and mere achievement.”

He carries this sentiment into a tiny, 60-page companion tome, All That Happiness Is, in which he explains that achievement is merely completing a task, the reward for which is often another task, whereas accomplishment is “the engulfing activity we’ve chosen, whose reward is the rush of fulfillment, the sense of happiness that rises uniquely from absorption in a thing outside ourselves.” He notes, too, that accomplishment is egalitarian. “Every enterprise, every job, every short-order recipe—everything we do can be done more or less beautifully.” Whether it’s plumbing or building rockets or leading a team, the real work involves some artistry.

Is your work about artful accomplishment? Probably not. Gopnik notes that “our social world conspires to denigrate…accomplishments in favor of the rote work of achievement.” This is in part why mastery (and happiness) feels out of reach for many.

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