Seth did, that’s who!
When the NESEA board hired me as interim executive director a year ago, I’m not sure that either they or I envisioned that they needed an architect to fill the role. Well, lo and behold, according to Seth Godin (yes, my favorite blogger again), this is exactly what they needed. In one of his recent gems, “Hire an architect,” Seth wrote:
“Architects don’t manufacture nails, assemble windows or chop down trees. Instead, they take existing components and assemble them in interesting and important ways.
It used to be that if you wanted to build an organization, you had to be prepared to do a lot of manufacturing and assembly–of something. My first internet company had 60 or 70 people at its peak… and today, you could run the same organization with six people. The rest? They were busy building an infrastructure that now exists. Restaurants used to be built by chefs. Now, more than ever, they’re built by impresarios who know how to tie together real estate, promotion, service and chefs into a package that consumers want to buy. The difficult part isn’t installing the stove, the difficult (and scarce) part is telling a story.
I’m talking about intentionally building a structure and a strategy and a position, not focusing your energy on the mechanics, because mechanics alone are insufficient. Just as you can’t build a class A office building with nothing but a skilled carpenter, you can’t build a business for the ages that merely puts widgets into boxes.
My friend Jerry calls these people corporate chiropractors. They don’t do surgery, they realign and recognize what’s out of place.
Organizational architects know how to find suppliers, use the cloud (of people, of data, of resources), identify freelancers, tie together disparate resources and weave them into a business that scales. You either need to become one or hire one.
The organizations that matter are busy being run by people who figure out what to do next.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s exactly what my staff and I try to do every day here at NESEA. I think I’ll add Organizational Architect to my resume the next time I need to search for a job . . . which I’m hoping won’t be for a very, very long time.
Have a great weekend all.
Jennifer
About Jennifer M.
Perhaps it’s true that an “organization” (social unit of people, systematically arranged and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals on a continuing basis) requires an architect (or more accurately, a manager or administrator) to organize the disparate parts, roles, skills and visions into a coherent whole.
But the small entrepreneurial enterprises which built this nation and which are still the foundation for economic creativity and satisfying work, are more akin to that restaurant started by a chef with skill, hope and tenacity that Seth denigrates.
Impressarios, as Seth correctly points out, are about management and marketing, or putting together a package of other people’s art “that consumers want to buy”. And architects, as Seth also correctly asserts, do not make anything themselves, unless you consider design something tangible (when, too often, it is an imposition of ego onto the artifice of others).
“Mechanics along are insufficient”, Seth claims. Yet mechanics (those skilled in shaping and uniting materials, as wood, metal, etc., into any kind of structure, machine, or other object, requiring the use of tools) in the broader sense of day’s gone by are those whose skill – and, yes, artistic vision – created the built environment that met basic human needs.
Seth tells us “you can’t build a class A office building with nothing but a skilled carpenter”. That may be true, if by “class A office building” you mean something grand in scale that has a commensurate impact on the cultural and ecological environment, or “a business that scales”.
But, if we hadn’t narrowed our vocations into specializations which can function only within a very limited domain and hence require an organizational overseer (general contractor), we would still be seeing finely functional buildings created by skilled artisans (mechanics).
I think it’s time we stop thinking in terms of “scale” and return to human scale and well-tuned artisanship. What our world needs now is more master builders and fewer architects, more good chefs and fewer impressarios, more true mechanics and fewer general contractors, administrators, executive directors and CEOs – all of whom are compensated according to the value of, and by a surcharge on, other people’s work.
We have become a top-heavy society and it’s time we get back to basics, where real value lies.