Progress

By Aaron Hurst on January 5, 2010 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is an American sense of progress based, in part, on the manifest destiny proclaimed by the settlers of the West. For these settlers, new territory was not only desirable, it was a patriotic mandate. They gobbled up the West like Pacman on speed.

The era of manifest destiny coincided with the growth of the first real corporate boom as companies built railroads and delivered goods around the nation. These companies were built with the manifest destiny culture and mandate. Grow. Scale. Consume.

This core philosophy has continued through the corporate eras fueled by the military-industrial complex and booms in real estate, globalization, energy, finance and technology. Today, MBA programs teach that success is defined with the same goals. Grow. Scale. Consume.

Unlike the private sector, the nonprofit sector has focused on impact (value creation) rather than scale. At its best, this mentality has still sought organizational progress, but rather than a progress rooted in manifest destiny, it has been a progress more akin to that of a craftsman.

A craftsman's progress is defined by the quality of his craft and not solely by volume of production. The craftsman's success is measured by his ability to create increasingly high-quality goods of increasing value and by the satisfaction he derives from this process of creation.

Manifest destiny is a land grab. Craftsmanship is the art and science of value creation.

Given that the modern pacman company has been around for our entire lifetimes, we tend to think that it will and must always exist. It is such a core part of our lives and economy that to imagine scenarios where it is radically altered seems naive.

Still, the craftsman has actually been a part of civilization for much longer and represents a a more sustainable and more satisfying model. This model is healthier, because it is based on a resource constrained reality that affords more satisfying work for more people.

What if rather than teaching MBA students how to be pacmen, we taught them to be professionals? What if we taught them to value their trade as art or craft? What if we taught them to measure value creation and not just market share?