Coming Into Our Own

Artisan networks in the world of the constant interim.

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Depending on the angle from which we consider it, there's a thought that is either freeing or disturbing.

We’re all interim now

Not long ago, the workplace felt more stable. Even though we knew we would have several jobs within our careers, we could at least hope to plan those careers. We could progress through job titles in various companies until, hopefully, we could find a perch from which, when we fell, it would be onto a financial cushion.

No more. A combination of an obsession with data, a hunger for short-term performance, and the increasing distance between capital owners and where it is employed makes organisations more like dandelions and us like seeds. Designed to part company to somewhere unknown at the slightest puff of wind, we live in a world of constant interim.

It seems that everything is tightly coupled, with no slack to absorb minor disturbances. “Just in Time” has migrated from process to mindset, such that a slight hiccup in the supply chain of promised performance throws something into disarray, and someone has to be held responsible. Our businesses feel increasingly like Premier League football clubs, with managers and players finding themselves suddenly mobile after a short run of bad luck.

Whenever we join a company, whatever the rhetoric, it is for an indeterminate period. It will be governed by not just our own performance but by a range of factors far outside our control. The idea of redundancy is no longer an exception but a normal part of the landscape, and we need to become comfortable with that.

It is disorienting, and mid-career people can be forgiven for feeling somewhat abandoned. It’s as though they thought they were on a journey to the Mediterranean only to find themselves in the Baltic.

One of the interesting things about the world of “interim management” is the profile of those occupying it. A small proportion are professional interims, not dissimilar to professional footballers. They are highly skilled at what they do, committed to going in, doing the job, and getting out before moving on to the next job. Another metaphor would be mercenaries, with many of the skills of consultants but who put themselves on the front line. For those of us who have used them, we know they are worth their premium fees. Most “interim managers” though, are no such thing. They are homeless corporate animals, filling in time and making a living whilst waiting for a new home.

Artisans are primarily loyal to their craft. Some are Masters with their own practice developed over time in a location they have chosen. Far more, though, are modern journeymen or women, making their way from master to master, honing their craft until they become one themselves or stay journeymen or women by choice, the equivalent of those professional players and mercenaries.

They no longer expect to remain static, occupying a comfortable niche with a benign employer until retirement. In a tightly coupled world, economic disturbance or technology will come to them.

Professional players, like professional interims, have management agents who understand the market, its trends, where the opportunities lie, and when it is time to move. They understand that loyalty is fans and shareholders, that it is fickle, and that there is no tenure.

In a previous age, the “working class” had Trade Unions. In today’s market, if we are paid employees, we are working class regardless of our salary level. Whole tranches have nobody representing them, and HR is not their friend, it is their keeper.

As modern artisans, we need three things: a definable, in-demand skill, being above average at it, and understanding the market, our current place in it, and where the opportunities are emerging.

The first two qualities are our personal responsibility. The last is an open question right now. Only a few of us will be able to afford an agent, so what do we do to move from dependence on an employer, beyond the uncertainty of lonely independence and on towards something more akin to interdependence: self-sufficiency in the company of a supportive community?

We need to reinvent community for the digital age. We need something local for our personal sense of belonging and something more aligned with our professional belonging. A hybrid of the village and the Guild. People we can meet in three dimensions, and those who can give us a wider perspective on the markets we serve.

Paradoxically, we can learn from insurgents, but instead of instilling terror, we can instil a sense of calmness, confidence, and connection. Small, independent, local groups linked together to create intelligent, broader webs to gather and share information and ideas with the intent of identifying, creating, and sharing opportunities for the work we want to do. Something that senses and feeds off what data misses and where imagination and intuition outmanoeuvre remote instruction.

It is not fanciful. There are those reading this post already doing it, promoting open conversation in small groups that inform and inspire their participants. All we have to do is connect them, and there are others reading this who not only know how to do that, but are already doing it.

The problem with goals, agendas and measurement is that they do not promote conversation, they inhibit it and put it in a cage. When others set those goals and agendas, they are not creative; they are constraining, requiring us to “perform”.

Of course we need the sort of work that demands performance, but not at the expense of the work and connection that satisfies. Without the latter, we remain enclosed, inside the walls. We need opportunities to spend time outside the walls, orienting ourselves to the realities of what is happening, and identifying the gaps we can fill that offer more than constant measurement in return for temporary wages from those who have nothing other than conditional interest in us.

We need artisan networks. A mycelium connecting people, shared purpose, and resources that give rise to the sort of enterprises and initiatives that feeds the soul, nourishes communities, and replaces the decaying businesses in which many of us find ourselves.

It doesn’t need a big initiative, or to be launched, or to have a manifesto. We just need to start, and conversations will do the rest.

During April, I will combine this blog and Outside the Walls under Outside the Walls as a place to start, grow, and connect the conversations we need, and mail each of you as I go to ensure you have a voice, and are heard.

In a very genuine sense, I’m starting before I’m ready, and before I really know what I’m doing.

But if not now, when?