- Leandro Herrero - https://leandroherrero.com -

6 types of employees I want (1 of 2): craftsmen, entrepreneurs and activists

My ideal modern organization has different characters on the payroll. If there is a payroll. These are three of them:

1. The craftsman

Perhaps nobody better than Richard Sennett  [1] (Sociology, LSE, Humanities New York) has described  it. Himself a good craftsman of ideas, he explains the traits: skills and care to make things well, not necessarily for its immediate utilitarian reasons, with focus on detail, perhaps on beauty, or perfection, whether in a pottery workshop or a lab. What distinguishes them most is their motivation for life time learning. I imagine strategy making as a craft, more pottery than spreadsheets. I have been using the term ‘crafting’ for many moons. I hope that the use of the language makes me become one.

2. The entrepreneur

They create things, not necessarily from zero, but look for alternatives, try, experiment and above all take risks. The term is associated  with taking initiative. A passive entrepreneur checking in from 9 to 5 is an oxymoron. I want entrepreneurs on the payroll. I imagine a company of entrepreneurs and its leadership with the sole goal of creating space for them. I imagine the question ‘how many employees do you have?’ changed into ‘how many entrepreneurs do you have?’

3. The activist

Which includes the word ‘act’. Therefore not ‘Wait-ivists’, ‘Later-ivists’ or ‘once-we-have-aligned-all-stakeholders-ivists’. They understand the imperative of action; the concept of ‘agency’: take control, be in charge of destiny, express themselves. For the activist, permission was never granted, it was always taken.

OK, three more tomorrow.

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Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project [2], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral ChangeTM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.
Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements [3] on topics covered in his Daily Thoughts and his books [4], and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project [5].