Navigation for Artisans

When the work GPS starts to fail

This is the first of an ongoing series of regular additional posts, one or two a week, for paid subscribers to New Artisans. The intention is to delve deeper into the concept of the NOTICE framework, experiment with it, create space for conversations, and develop it into something useful. There is no plan or clear destination.

When things are as uncertain as they are, progress is made through discovery, not current knowledge.

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When did you last make a career decision that felt truly yours?

Like Hemingway’s description of Bankruptcy, the spaces we work in have contracted gradually and then suddenly. It doesn't seem like that long ago that we had enough latitude in the workplace to do interesting things. Company performance was measured, but it wasn't reduced to the very detailed individual levels it is now. There was space to play, discuss, and experiment. Personally, I never had a single interesting conversation around the water cooler. Still, I had plenty of time in the many spaces that existed between doing the work, which gave us time to think about it.

Those spaces have now disappeared, consumed by performative cultures, a quest for efficiency, and the constant interruption of tools like Slack and Jira, as well as other things that seem to require attention every few minutes. No, when we're at work, we're at work. Paradoxically, there is no slack, no time to stand, stare, and wonder.

Artisans have a symbiotic relationship with their work. They shape it, and it shapes them in return. Because of that, performative work cultures that leave no space for developing a relationship with their work are such uncomfortable places for them. When we lose that connection, we feel it at a quiet but visceral level.

There is an artisan in most of us, though it can be hard to give it room to breathe when there are families to support and rent and mortgages to pay. There is little mileage in complaining about it because the systems we have created prioritise the drumbeat of money over the half-formed ideas of whose ideas could transform the business if given space. However, just because complaining is pointless does not mean we’re helpless.

Within a very short space of time, the idea of careers within a business have become a thing of the past. Progress is dependent on performance, not loyalty or ideas, and in organisations that increasingly resemble the Wild West, there's always the faster gun in town.

So in this, the first of four blogs in which I want to do a deeper dive into the idea of navigation, I want to start with a question,

What do we do when our career GPS stops working?