New Artisans, and the Power of 13 Questions
The Nature of Practice.
As with many things that I have done which have worked out to be worthwhile, there was no plan or preconceived intent for New Artisans. It was merely an articulation of an emergent idea planted in the soil of conversation to see what might happen.
When such ideas show signs of life and start to grow, we must work out what it is and whether we should move it from the potting shed to the garden. Having long been a fan of Alan’s work and spent time with him, the thirteen questions from “Do Build” seemed a good way to go about informing that decision.
That is what I have aimed to do over the last thirteen posts - to do no more than focus his questions on New Artisans in your company to see what I learned.
In this post, I’m going to reflect on that learning; then tomorrow bring it into focus on what I will consider in my own Practice, and follow up with a conversation with Alan and others who want to join in, on 9th August, 6:00 pm UK, on Zoom. There’s a link at the end of this post.
The first powerful insight I had from working through these questions is how little attention we pay to the potential of questions as a vehicle for creativity. We have become used to questions that are transactional, seeking facts, plans, and opinions as though we are building a piece of flat-pack furniture. Alan’s questions are different - they are ambitious, probe intent more than goals, are open rather than closed and are pregnant with many other tiny questions that emerge as we consider them.
The questions we need right now are crafted in a way that reminds me of Peter Korn:
“In the workshop, wishing won't make it so. The craftsman is forced to come to terms with the physical properties of materials, the mechanical properties of tools, and the real capacity and limits of his own dexterity, discipline and imagination. In this way, craft's materiality imposes cooperation on the sometimes discordant factions of the mind. By necessity, it reconciles the desire to interpret the world in ways that are emotionally gratifying with the countervailing need for accurate information to facilitate effective decisions. Thus the holistic quality of craft lies not only in engaging the whole person but also in harmonising his understanding of himself in the world.”
― Peter Korn, Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
There’s a powerful passage in the book where he talks about a piece of wood on his lathe that he wants to make into a chair leg but recognises as he works it that this piece of wood would be better as something else. He has a relationship with, asks questions of, and listens to the materials he is working.
Whatever we’re working on, from a set of accounts to planting trees, we can do the same rather than brutalise it into submission via algorithms and policy.
If we are to ask questions like Alan’s, we need to spend time building a relationship with what we’re doing. It takes time and reflection and is distinctly inefficient viewed from a “performance” perspective, but that is why it matters if what we are in the process of creating is to meet the criteria of the thirteen questions.
Making time for Reflection is a Practice.
The second insight involves lifecycles - of projects, businesses, careers and our lives. Asking these questions of a start-up involves aspirations of what we want it to be. Asked during the growth phase, they feed off the excitement of mobility and expose us to the pressure and often the necessity of compromise if we are to acquire the funding and the clients we need for growth.
At maturity, the questions face different pressures, as we need to pay back the liabilities we have incurred along the way, from loans and mortgages to promises to others. Finally, there is the inevitable decline phase and resisting the temptation to keep something that needs to die and be recycled alive because we don’t know what to do next. Many businesses and careers within them resemble zombies for this very reason.
I keep the graphic at the start of this post in a frame on my desk, where I have no choice other than to see it and acknowledge the questions from where I am right now.
Questions are a form of Practice.
The third key insight is a result of Alan’s questions meeting the work of Marianne Mazzucato and Rosie Collington’s “The Big Con”. (I love Mazzucato’s work. Perhaps the world’s scariest economist, she is to establishment economics what Ben Stokes is to Australian Cricket.)
The insight is that, under pressure to perform, we infantilise ourselves.
As businesses, we too often resort to consultants when we should be learning how to do things ourselves. As individuals, we look for easy solutions in self-help books and posts on LinkedIn rather than do the hard work of asking ourselves the thirteen questions and doing the hard work of answering them and confronting the realities they expose.
The artisan in us is always waiting to do the work only we can do. We can access what we need, most of it for free. All we need is a place to start and people we trust to start with. We do not have to jump ship from an employer until we’re ready. Perhaps a more appropriate project might have been “The Secret Artisan”, “The Insurgent Artisan”, or maybe “The Reluctant Artisan”.
It doesn't matter, of course, because the only thing we need is a place to start, whatever we may call it, and ask ourselves the right questions.
Diary Date: 9th August, 6:00 pm UK
Alan Moore, the originator of the questions I have been pondering these last couple of weeks, will join us on Zoom to consider our reactions, questions and thoughts on how we apply them to our own practices and businesses.
Open to Subscribers only. Limited to 18 participants. Not to be missed.