New Artisans.
Choosing Craft in a World Obsessed with Scale.
The majority of us enter the world of work in the same way.
After fifteen years of compulsory, increasingly formulaic education, and a further period of tertiary study, we get out first job. The excitement, the independence and the possibilities are intoxicating.
We are so busy exploring learning to navigate the world of work, learning the processes, obeying the protocols and becoming conditioned to the culture that we barely notice the walls being built around us. The way the culture of the business shapes us as we strive for promotion. The responsibilities as we form relationships, find partners, have children and acquire mortgages. The obligations we place on ourselves to be seen as successful, from how we dress, what we drive, where we holiday and who we mix with. The compromises we make to be seen to "perform", from long hours to the sacrifices we make in the attention we pay to those we love.
Our efforts bring rewards as we progress, but inevitably, for the vast majority of us, the gradient of our progression starts to flatten as competition for the ever-decreasing number of roles as we ascend the hierarchy takes its toll.
We can improve our chances temporarily by moving to a new employer and maybe even to a different, faster-growing sector, but the inevitable logic of employment will still catch up with us.
As the logic of performance has spread from the private sector to the public sector and on into the third sector, performance has become the critical determinant of success as we face the relentless pursuit of growth.
Our job is contingent on our performance evaluated in hard metrics, and as the law of diminishing marginal returns has its way, we find ourselves competing not just with our peers but also with those behind us whose training is more recent. Technology starts to erode the value of our experience as knowledge and skills become instantly accessible, and we sense our career curve inside the walls flattening, the downslope beckoning, and an acute awareness of our vulnerability.
And yet, even as globalisation and technology turns even complex skills into commodities, the parts of us that do not get measured in hard metrics have been developing and maturing, our sense of what matters in the world - our sense of personal purpose and meaning - is solidifying. Even as we work ever harder to stand still, we become ever more aware of just how shallow many organisations, especially large ones, have become,
We sense a fork in the road approaching and choices to be made.
It isn't easy.
On the one hand, the temptation to stay put is vast. We know where we are and the rules of the game played inside the walls. We are protective of the status we have gathered. We convince ourselves that we will be able to make it through to retirement. The dissonance we feel in considering moving on is enormous, and wilful blindness is tempting.
On the other hand, we have come to understand ourselves better, what brings us satisfaction, and the aspects of our work that offer us a sense of who we are at our best. We have a sense of our craft. We know what it feels like to exercise our skills in a way that resonates with our character and values. We can imagine what it might be like to live like that and shape a legacy, no matter how small, that reflects who we are more than a title we hold in an organisation that already has a succession plan for us.
Work can be different things. At the performance end of the spectrum, it can be turning skills into profit as a tenant in an organisation owned by others, or at the craft end, it can be marrying those same skills to our character and vision to turn ideas that matter to us into being that otherwise might not exist.
The conventional world of work sees us in a disjunctive way. There is a line. We are qualified, or we are not. We are performing, or we are not. We have achieved our goals, or we have not. We compete in a winner-take-all world.
The craft world is different—it is spectral. There is no line. We are on a continuous journey of discovery as we learn new things and leave old ones behind.
While we compete, we also collaborate because we know there is more to be discovered that is better done together and that there is room for all of us because scale is of no interest. Craft thrives on connection, community, and conversation. Craft is an idea that creates an ecosystem.
A good number of us, perhaps a great many of us, recognise the call of this rite of passage. We make it when we are ready—some at the outset of our careers, some towards the end. Many, though, will sense it in their mid-years.
New Artisans is for us. It is a space beyond the reach of our organisation where we can explore an idea or notion of our craft in the safe company of others doing the same.
Somewhere, we can imagine, think, and shape, so we are prepared when choices have to be made, voluntarily or due to circumstance.
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Outside the Walls
New Artisans came into being from conversations on my Outside the Walls Substack, which considers the wider changes we are seeing in the world of work.
