Reflections

When the Sun is Setting, We Have a Choice

There is something hard about letting go of what we have become accustomed to, whether it’s an idea, a perspective, an organisation, or even a career. We must recognise that we are not it and move beyond it. If we find the sun setting on the landscape we are familiar with; we can either pour ourselves a drink and watch it set or travel West and follow it.

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There are so many aspects of the industrial culture that have brought us to where the sun is setting that it can be difficult to know where to start.

We can feel climate change, hear the voices of those displaced, smell a sense of decay in the air and watch the antics of those deeply invested in what was as they try to persuade us, like extras from Monty Python that the industrial parrot is not dead. Despite that, we find ourselves often having to follow leaders with dubious logic, questionable strategies, and even more questionable motivation, as they insist that at any moment, there will be a squawk.

We can pour ourselves a drink and watch the sunset, or we can relocate the way we see work.

We can move metaphorically follow the sun

The best organisations do that - take people who have learned most of what can be learned where they are, and move them to somewhere totally unfamiliar where they have no choice but to use their skills to learn something new. The picture at the heading is an old Royal Air Force form with which I am familiar. Postings were often to a point of need rather than planned, and so it was only possible to take what was essential and leave the rest behind somewhere you could find it if needed. Most times, the majority of what was left behind was baggage rather than luggage, and never called on again.

Most organisations, however, do not. They use people to the point of exhaustion, moving slowly, weighed down by the baggage they have accumulated. They do not learn much at all. They hang around as best they can, waiting for the sun to go down on them.

We do not have to go with them. The technologies becoming available play far more into the hands of creative individuals and small groups than they do big, cumbersome corporations. Certainly, the technology will enable them to do what they already know how to do more efficiently and probably with fewer people, but it will not move them forward into the unfamiliar.

Ed Brenegar

shared this clip with me during the week, suggesting that walls are collapsing. It made me think:

“Advertising is a tax on a mediocre product”

Jeff Bezos, Amazon

What, I found myself wondering, does that say about the way we represent ourselves as individuals in the marketplace? AI-generated LinkedIn posts, increasingly AI-generated resumés, themselves scanned by algorithms long before they make it to a pressured human eyeball tasked with putting “good enough” bums on seats as quickly and cheaply as possible to replace the ones that have been exhausted, in pursuit of doing what we already know how to do more cheaply.

“I helped the Post Office / Thames Water / Pick Your Own/ make Budget” is not something any of us want as our epitaph.

Most of us want to earn a good living doing work we are proud to be associated with, doing it with people we trust for the benefit of people we know.

Good though it would be; there is no magic bullet. Those with mortgages and rent to pay, families to support, and education costs to cover have little option other than to work inside the walls for a period. That does not, though, mean a lifetime commitment. Being ready to leave when the time comes (far sooner than most of us think) requires discipline and effort. Spending time nurturing what is unique about us that makes us smile and points and connects us to what we find important.

Learning what matters in increments, in good company, without pressure. Using our time inside the walls wisely and not let it consume us in search of security it cannot provide. We should be ready to “move west” even as the organisation we work for roots itself in place through a commitment to short-term returns, an aversion to the inevitable risk of true innovation, and the baggage of expensive, inflexible infrastructure and processes.

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Spending time Outside The Walls is rarely a place to venture in search of financial riches. The rewards are different, much more nuanced, and involve glimpses into the things that make life matter.

Skills are important, but it is how we use them, who with and to what end that matters, and that involves curiosity, commitment, and community.

There is no “course”, “process”, or “cheat sheet”; but there is conversation.

Conversation that uncovers goals rather than pursues them blindly. Doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over the quality and impact of that which we create and bring into the world.

Thinking in Kairos time rather than Chronos.

The purpose of bringing together New Artisans and Outside the Walls is to get people for whom work is about more than money together to explore the emerging spaces being opened up by new technologies and changing markets.

Starting today, posts here will be in two parts—the first, free to all, will continue to reflect on the changing world of work and those who populate it.

The second part that follows below, for paid subscribers only, is an opportunity to explore this space together in conversation and see what we might discover together.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a thought and wish you a great week.

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy