Productivity takes time
Lately I have been thinking a lot about craft. I often do, but recently it’s been a particular pre-occupation because a couple of weeks ago, in the company of fellow admirers, I raised a celebratory glass to the memory of Norman Ackroyd, who died last month.
This post is illustrated with a photograph of a work called Stac an Armin, an etching made by Ackroyd of the eponymous rock stack, part of the St Kilda archipelago off the north west coast of the Scottish mainland.
One of its prints, framed as you can see, hangs on my study wall. It is behind me as I sit at my desk, and so presents its delights to my video callers as well as offering me relief whenever I turn my back on the screen.
The relief comes not only from the wild beauty of the depicted scene itself but also from reflecting on the craft that enabled Ackroyd to both capture its magnificence and create a work of art magnificent in its own right.
He shows and talks about how he works in a film you can watch online — see footnote — which I strongly recommend because I believe his combination of creativity, craft and commitment has much to teach us all, artists or not.
At one point in the short film he is asked how he knows when a particularly crucial (and irreversible) stage of the etching process is complete, and he replies: “I just guess!”
In reality, of course, it is a very well-educated guess, the result of his mastery of all aspects of the work, from the initial sketches of his subjects to the technicalities of the chemical processes that produce the plate.
I liken that ‘guess’ to what I call the ‘trained intuition’ we have all seen in various contexts other than an artist’s studio. I have noticed it, for example, when shadowing experienced nurses and care workers in people’s homes.
There is more to this than learning a skill or understanding a process, though both are essential components. The craft is forged through practical application and deepening of that learning in countless unique moments of committed practice.
This takes time, and improves with it: time to learn the relevant skills and processes; to carry out each necessary practice properly in the moment; to reflect on that practice, over days, weeks and months; and to enrich understanding through years of experience.
When this is possible the public value can be enormous. Yet many public servants, working under management regimes that define and measure productivity inappropriately, cannot enjoy such a relationship with time.
In the film I mentioned earlier, Ackroyd reflects on how lucky he is to make a living doing what he loves. We cannot all be so lucky, but we can change the organisational environments in which we work so that fewer people fall out of love with their work.
To do that we must enable more people not only to learn and practice the essential skills of their roles but also to develop their craft more fully, for the benefit of those they serve as well as for their own job satisfaction.
We might just find that paves the way for improved productivity – defined and measured in ways suited to context – in many ways, such as by getting it right first time more often, reducing ‘failure demand’ and improving staff retention.
Colin Talbot and I will be chatting about public service productivity in Public World’s Community Cuppa tomorrow – do please join us at 11 am, London time, Friday 18 October.
Meanwhile, RIP Norman Ackroyd. Your art has brought joy not only to yourself but also to countless others, and your craft and mastery of it will stand the test of time as an inspiring example to us all.
- Here is a link to the short film about Norman Ackroyd.
- For a wonderful example of public value created through a long process of intertwined practical and theoretical learning, I recommend this Washington Post article, brought to my attention by Margaret Heffernan.