We often hear of traditional businesses being segregated into binary classes… chiefs and indians, queens and drones, conductor and musicians… you get the picture. We then often deride management-heavy organizations by claiming they "have too many chiefs and not enough indians." The insinuation is that we need a multitude of "workers" and just a few "managers." Whatever that really means.
In the Washington Post last month Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business, takes another stab at organizational classification by comparing employees to painters and artists.
Business life is filled with lots of painters and fewer artists. The "painters" are the technicians, such as actuaries, time-and-motion efficiency experts, accountants who get the books to balance down to the last penny, logistics honchos who slim down your inventory, and derivatives analysts. Most entry-level jobs for MBA graduates are to be painters, or assistant painters, or just people who hold the paint pots.
Artists in business are visionaries, inventors, entrepreneurs and general managers, people who create something larger out of the assembly of resources. They are quick learners, they recognize problems and opportunities ahead of the crowd, they shape visions and enlist others in support, they communicate well and are socially aware. They serve with integrity, and, as leaders, they have a bias for action.
Bruner goes on to describe the need for more leaders that are artists, and shamelessly plugs Darden as a place where "high-potential artists and masterful painters" are miraculously created.
I have a problem with the fundamental premise: that the "leaders" are artists while workers are the painters. Do we really need painters?
Sure, there are basic business processes that must get done, and done well. But most of those processes are bureaucratic waste, which can be demolished by some value stream mapping. Core value-added activities are not onerous, are not rote, and really don’t take much time. Those of us in the lean manufacturing world have proven that again.
Instead the workers, as well as the leaders, need to be artists. Toyota is famous for leveraging the knowledge and creativity… artistry… of every employee. The janitors generate valuable ideas, probably even more than the factory manager. Every employee is expected to enlist the support of others, envision new processes, learn quickly, and recognize problems and opportunities. Toyota is a company of artists.
Don’t just segregate your operation into painters and artists, train your painters to be artists.
Lou English says
I understand your point of leveraging the potential of the organization by making everyone “Artists”. Another important point is the “added value” role of the leadership levels of the organization. Too often we have people in top level artists positions coming down off the ladders to do the painters job. Leaders who do not know their added value role often get in the painters way creating confusion and delay. Artistic leaders need to set direction, set goals, connect people, support change through their every day actions and priorities and enforce standards. Doing this well is how they can set the conditions for budding artists down in the organization.
Lou English PhD.
J Thatcher says
If everyone empowered their workers to become visionaries, then Bruner doesn’t exactly have a job.
Obviously there are natural differences in ability and aptitude for certain tasks, but to believe that some people are only meant for “mundane,” useless or not, tasks is a typically elitist view. Wholly unsurprising given the source.
Mark Graban says
That seems very Taylorist… that thinking is still so embedded in Western business and the MBA mindset. Taylor literally wrote that workers must be “stupid” or they would have found better jobs or lines of work.
Such arrogance. Yikes.
Great post Kevin, good job calling them out on that.
david foster says
There’s an interesting book called “Artful Making” that suggests the theatre company as a good model for the organization of work. The authors are Rob Austin and Lee Devlin.
Ken says
You all nailed it; elitest and Taylorist at best. Add Darden to the list of business schools to avoid if you want to learn how to run a real business that’s filled with talented people. It’s because of people like Bruner that businesses get a bad rap. Thanks for poking him.
Tracey M says
Great post and thanks for pointing to that article so I can lecture my leadership class (not at Darden!) on what antique leadership looks like. Truly amazing that someone at that school, the leader no less, knows so little about how leveraging people talent.