Artisans and Connection
A Conversation about Strategies of Becoming
The world of work at the moment has much in common with commercially grown mushrooms in that, as we used to say, we seem to be kept mainly in the dark and fed on shit. In the natural world, though, they are the fruiting bodies powered by a web of connection no one can see.
As obsolescent ways of working decay, it is our connections that matter.
2025 looks likely to be more than interesting as the old order changes, whether it wants to or not. The world of work in which we find ourselves mainlining to a single employer, who in turn is turning tricks to tell the stories of certainty that the investors they mainline on need, whilst looking for their next hit feels remarkably fragile.
Right now, the collective corporate amygdala is firing away, and the fight/flight/freeze responses are evident daily as the gates are closed, any assets that do not offer immediate returns are jettisoned, and any opportunity that has a whiff of speculative risk shunned regardless of the medium-term peril it might create. That is for the next of executives to deal with.
Yet the opportunities exist, as they do in any transition, even if they are the wrong shape for the organisations we have created.
When I’m thinking, I often sketch ideas to find ways into them that help me find the right words. As I was thinking about this post, here’s a sketch that helped me:
In a world of work driven by productivity, efficiency and performance, what can be automated via processes and technology will be, and most work will find its way into the commodity quadrant. Whether we’re lawyers or labourers, jobs become gigs, extracting maximum performance for the lowest price, and working for others on their terms.
For those who do the hard work of continuous development, there is a path to differentiated work in specialist sectors, at least for a while. Still working for others, but more on our terms.
After a while, though, freedom becomes appealing. Some move to working for themselves, at first mentally and then structurally. They work on their own terms, choosing their work and who they do it for, and develop the capability to work at the edges, helping the emergent to become real, in whatever small way.
Some, from the outset, and others from a conscious choice, become artists, midwifing the emergent on their own terms and willing to make the sacrifices needed to create the art that matters to them, whatever their skill.
Commodity jobs offer money but no nutrition. Employers have little or no interest in development in a world where they can hire replacements from anywhere. If we are paid a monthly salary, we are consumables.
To become differentiated or artisans, we must adopt the mindset of working for ourselves.
As more and more work moves into the commodity quadrant, we need our own strategies.
I like Seth Godin’s questions that define strategy in his latest book, “This is Strategy”:
Strategy as a Philosophy of Becoming "Who will we become, who will we be of service to, and who will they help others to become"
Business Schools are of limited help, and Universities chasing the business dollar little more so. Learning is a core part of our strategy; there has never been a better, cheaper provision for learning what we want.
The major part of strategy, though, is connection. To people, ideas, and resources that can take us through differentiation to becoming New Artisans and the architects of what work will become for those who choose.
In my recent posts, I have written about those who are observers and those who can help us orient towards what we desire. There are others - the generators of ideas, the conceptualisers who give them form and the implementors who give them traction.
We’ve been here before, at the beginning of the industrial age. The Physiocrats, the predecessors of today’s economists, divided the market into three elements - the producers who created value, the merchants who traded it, and the “sterile classes” who serviced the producers and merchants but created nothing of material value.
Of course, it’s different today - we trade stories, not value. Valuations are made based on tomorrow’s imaginary earnings, but the reality remains the same. Some create value, some create stories, others consume, and David Graeber’s notion of “Bullshit Jobs” becomes clear.
As the magic roundabout of fabulous stories slows down, and the inequitable biosphere damaging reality of our consumption-driven economies bites, we wonder to ourselves whether we will be the first species to become extinct because we are not financially viable.
Developing our strategy cannot be done in a course or by following a process. Our strategy is a synthesis of skills and soul expressed as intuition. It is developed in conversations with others doing the same, connecting to the ideas that emerge and developing the habits of continual orientation to the changing circumstances of the changing world that employers would rather stand still.
Sensemaking in these conditions is a dynamic process because tomorrow's sense will be different from today’s, and if we are not attuned to that reality, we will find ourselves becalmed.
Because performance is not a strategy that will give us lives that matter.
Join us this evening for a conversation about connection and strategy.
Strategy is a conversation Outside the Walls of the organisation that thinks of us as employees. Strategy is connection to those who see what we might miss, and bring it to our attention whilst we do the same for others. Strategy is about joining the dots that matter, and helping others to do the same. Personal Strategy is a Community of Practice