Scale
“Scale,” an intersectional pondering of performance metrics, scaling solutions, and creating poetry, written by a poet masked in a corporate suit, April 23, poem 113 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. "Hershey Chocolate Enrober," Hershey, PA, USA. Photo by Diana Ludwick (c) 2
"But does it scale?"
A Boardroom favorite.
The killer of all blue sky
brainstorming pods.
Can a solution, X solves for Y,
be repeated with high fidelity
at a volume high enough
to beget sustained ROI?
Feeling behind on my writing,
I now ask myself, pointedly:
Creativity — Can It Scale?
I have never heard of a
corporate poet in residence.
In a land of outcome over output:
Can I produce genuine poems
at enterprise levels?
Acts of art made efficiently;
streamlined, in high volume.
And under deadline, no less.
All without sacrificing wit,
wisdom or wackiness?
It's a matter of metrics.
For a poetic performance review:
How to measure a musing?
Who determines success?
When do I know, did I scale,
or fail?
Perhaps pentameters
don't perform well when
pressure-tested
and process-mapped.
For this fiscal quarter,
I'll stick to the slow roads.
