(Opening Session) Lessons from the Felt: Thoughts on Risk, Community, and Lifelong Learning from a Poker Player Turned Conservator by Matthew Cushman
Abstract: https://aics47thannualmeeting2019.sched.com/event/Iurq/opening-session-lessons-from-the-felt-thoughts-on-risk-community-and-lifelong-learning-from-a-poker-player-turned-conservator
In the opening session, Matthew Cushman discusses what he has learned from playing poker and how those lessons relate to art conservation. Poker in practice is about making best decision without certainty, understanding that uncertainty is non-binary, and that risk can only be mitigated and not entirely avoided.
Poker reinforces the need to have a process for reviewing your working methods, building relationships (regardless of competition) to foster continuing education, and understanding what your contribution would be in a situation. Biases in every situation hinder our ability to “plug leaks,” or learn effectively from prior experiences (both negative and positive). This lesson immediately brought the A Failure Shared is Not a Failure: Learning from Our Mistakes session to my mind. As a field, we are often hesitant to admit that treatments didn’t go to plan, that accidents happen, or that mistakes are made; which could be hindering our ability to gauge the effectiveness of current treatment protocols and advance new methods. As we continue to discuss what has gone right as well as what went wrong, I think the field will be better positioned to be adaptable.
Cushman discusses the importance of peer-to-peer teaching, mentor-mentee teaching, and the creation of a collaborative advisory group or “pod.” Poker players that attempt to do all their learning on their own are not good poker players because there is no one to challenge their biases about how well or how poorly they calculated risk. He suggested ground rules for “pods,” which are also applicable to any relationship focused on growth. The rules are as follows:
- All members must be committed to accuracy and exploratory thought
- Information must be shared freely
- All members should hold themselves and each other accountable
- All members should be prepared to combat biases and hold good faith dissent
Building and maintaining a pod or learning-based relationship is not easy but Cushman has found that it improved his ability to self-calibrate, work in concert/ tackle multifaceted problems in conjunction with other people, and understand opportunity costs to focus his efforts. As a poker player, he often builds his pod with people he regarded as competitors across the felt.
The last questions he poses were what will your main contribution be, are you right for it, and if you are not, how do you support the right person? I think this is something we should all ask ourselves at the beginning of each venture, whether personal or professional, and answer honestly with ourselves with allowances for growth. Our ability to contribute will change over the course of time, as will our rightness for the position but we should always be prepared to support the person who is right for an opportunity, whether self or otherwise.
I personally felt the ground rules for building a learning relationship and his last questions were the things that stuck with me the most.
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