Thought fot the day: craftsmen do better (even as managers)
from Merijn Knibbe
It takes a decade to train a craftsman. Or a craftswomen. Longer, in fact. In my country, it takes about fifteen years to master the manual art of surgery – and some more years as well as rigorous specialisation to become a top surgeon. Is this investment worthwhile?
Yes, it is. And not just because top surgeons make fewer mistakes. According to Amanda Goodall, physician led hospitals score a whopping 25% better on a quality index than manager led hospitals:
“hospitals positioned higher in the US News and World Report’s “Best Hospitals” ranking are led disproportionately by physicians”
And again: differences are large. The sad (indeed: alarming) thing: we’re drifting away from ‘the real thing’: “In the past, hospitals were routinely led by doctors. That has changed. In the UK and the US, most hospital chief executive officers (CEOs) are non-physician managers rather than physicians“.
As far as I’m concerned, the same thing holds for companies. Effective leaders often have spent the better part of two decades inside these companies, working their way up from the bottom. And I do visit quite some students doing an internship, or working on thesis, and I do discuss their work with their bosses and read their reports: companies are not an alien world to me.
Two questions:
* has anybody ever seen a ‘neo-liberal’ advise on economic governance which emphasizes the importance of craftsmanship?
* am I right that one of the main reasons why non-specialist managers always press for more power to fire is their ardent wish to get rid of annoying but highly experienced underlings who do know what they are talking about when it comes to managing the place?
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
Excellent post. It’s interesting to consider in this light the areas where worker management is still routine, namely those sectors dominated by the partnership form of ownership. This means law, accounting, still to some extent medicine (my father spent his whole career at a doctor at a physician-managed HMO) altho as you say that is becoming less common, advertising, architecture, engineering, etc. It’s an interesting question why craft prerogatives have remained relatively intact among service professionals, even while being ruthlessly exterminated for manual work.
Here in the US (I’m not that familiar with other nations’ public education systems), we keep kids in school (US K-12) WAY longer than necessary. How long does it take to learn to read, write and do some simple math? I’d say, under three years–but let’s say six. So, by the sixth grade, kids should be encouraged to try out different skills–that is, skills that enable one to actually DO something or MAKE something–or at least, learn what the different professions and trades actualy do. Then, having invested the system with master builders and craftsmen to teach (perhaps, part time), those kids should be learning to make and do–not sitting in one-size-fits-all desk/chairs doing the minimal to keep mom and dad reasonably happy by getting “good” “grades”. They should be learning that you do/make something in order to get it right–not get a good “grade”. Either it works or it doesn’t. A screw-up with your box such that the sides don’t meet nor can a top be securely fitted and that box is not useful for securely carrying stuff. Integrity and knowledge go hand-in-hand in skills and professions like medicine and construction.
Nope. The important thing is to bring home good “grades”.
What a crock.
Sharon-
Hear hear!
Or as Harry Braverman put it,
Wow. Thanks, JW.
I studied development economics and comparative economic systems in graduate school, my reason for attending was to find out why me, a California surfer, was being called a communist for objecting to the domino theory as a rational for the Vietnam war. An economics professor in a required undergraduate econ class had told our class that Vietnam had fought China for 800 years to keep its independence, he also explained how the US and England were the only countries to vote in the UN against the right of countries to manage their own internal affairs. Upon finishing my thesis for a Master’s degree I informed my advisor that I had decided to stay on and earn a Phd. “You are already the same as one,” he responded, “we have plenty of those, go work in corporations and agriculture, learn something of the trades, then come back for another degree.” It did not occur to me then that my advisor had set me on a course that would take most of my life. So, today, I consider myself an applied economist, practicing. I have developed sanitation, shelter and water for people who make a dollar a day, it’s a non age or gender specific task that provides practice with democracy similar to the indigenous water governance in New Mexico, comunalidad. I urge all economist to familiarize themselves with these practices that support justice and equity and provide externalized profits through a modern labor theory of value. Manuals are available which cover more of the economic theory but all is open source starting here http://www.ferrocement.com/Shelter-2010/post-1_5-2010.html
The latest movie by Ben Affleck, “Company Men” is the story of several senior executives at a maritime shipping company who are fired, along with lots of line workers to “improve the profit and market potential of the company.” In other words, to keep the stock price up and shareholders happy. No longer are shareholders expected or willing to accept the risks of the investments they make. In a turn down of international trade maritime builders will likely suffer as fewer ships are built and used for trade. Plus the cost structure of US companies in this business is not favorable when compared to China, Korea, or even Russia. Rather than putting in place national policies to address these problems or at least mitigate their impacts instead US companies just layoff as many workers (and executives apparently) as necessary so investors can continue to get maximum returns and are saved from any of the effects of changes in trade, production utilization, or the general economy. In Affleck’s movie the head of the company as well as many of the executives who are let go did work their way up from the shop floor. But throughout the movie the CEO continually blames his actions in laying-off workers on the market — he’s only doing what the shareholders expect. And protecting his own golden parachute in the process. When did the concern for risk-mitigation become so one sided, so unidirectional? No wonder our economy is failing. We can’t train or keep skilled craftsmen to build products and services that can be sold. In the words of the old adage, we just keep rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic. It’s still going to sink. Dealing with the crisis has been reduced to “every man for himself,” so those with the most control and most money (or at least access to it) take the lifeboats and the rest are left to drown. Hell of a way to run an economy. It dooms the economy to failure from the outset.
Reminds me of the demise of a major freight company for over 100 years in Australia (Mayne Nickless) They knew freight, their execs were highly skilled highly trained highly experienced freight moving men. Many had worked there their way up and knew the logistics and costs inside out and what worked and what didnt. Then came the 1991 recession and Al Dunlap style the corporate suits marched in and sacked left right and centre – people who had been there decades. Indiscriminate sackings but that was the AL Dunlap style. The company no longer exists in freight – it took just afew short years after that recession to meet its end in freight in Australia…but some of those execs who knew freight went to the company that now runs freight in Australia. You could call it a brain drain. The sacked expertise just went to the best competitor – Toll.
Sometimes its not the bad times that sink a good ship – its the response to the crisis.
It happened here (UK) when the railways were privatised under Thatcher. Most of the experts within the nationalised British Rail were ‘retired’. We then experienced a long series of fatal crashes.
And it happens here (in the Netherlands), in a hospital in Rotterdam. This hospital knows an outbreak of a multi-resistent bacteria. As far as everybody can tell, people are dying because of this. Today (28/07), newspapers reported that a professor of preventive medicine, specialized in preventing and containing exactly such events, who had a part time job at this hospital – had quit this job. He had offered his expertise to the (non-physician) managers. They turned his offer down.