What Artists Can Teach Managers

By Rob Austin & Lee Devin

Artful making (which includes agile software development, theatre rehearsal, some business strategy creation, and much of other knowledge work) is a process for creating form out of disorganized materials. Collaborating artists, using the human brain as their principal technology and ideas as their principal material, work with a very low cost of iteration. They try something and then try it again a different way, constantly reconceiving ambiguous circumstances and variable materials into coherent and valuable outputs.

Artful making differs from what we call industrial making, which emphasizes the importance of detailed planning, as well as tightly specified objectives, processes, and products. Its principles are familiar: Pull apart planning and production to specialize each; create a blueprint or specification, then conform to it; don't do anything before you know you can do everything; "Get it right the first time." When industrial makers conform to plans and specifications, they say their products and processes have "quality." The principles of industrial making are so embedded in business thinking that they're transparent and we don't notice them. We apply them reflexively; they are "The way we do things." But, as we shall see, industrial methods can distort reality and smother innovation. Artful and industrial making are distinct approaches and each must be applied in the appropriate conditions.

It's important to recognize that artful and industrial making are not mutually exclusive. Artful making doesn't replace industrial making. Artful making should not be applied everywhere, nor should industrial making. They complement each other and often can be used in combination. Complementary doesn't mean interchangeable, though. As opportunities for artful making multiply with the expansion of the knowledge work sector of business, managers and other workers must be careful not to attempt to solve artistic problems with industrial methods, and vice versa.

Artful Making Isn't Always the Best Approach
Artful making isn't always the right approach for creating business value. The conditions must be right for artful methods to make sense. The prerequisites are firm, no "ifs" or "maybes" about them. Following an artful making approach when prerequisite conditions are not satisfied is unwise. As we shall see, applying industrial making approaches when the prerequisites for artful making are satisfied is also unwise.

Sometimes the processes of making don't need to be innovative; sometimes exact replication will do. Other times innovation is needed but artful making isn't feasible because prerequisite conditions are not in place. The approach you use – artful or industrial making – is not entirely a matter of choice.

Artful making features rapid and frequent iteration. You can only reasonably follow the approach when iteration – doing and doing again – is inexpensive relative to the benefits gained from experience. If the cost of doing is high, the doing and doing again is a bad idea; you should prefer to spend more time planning, to make it more likely that you'll succeed on the first attempt. Industrial making provides the best approach to situations with a high cost of iteration.

To decide which approach to use, you must have an understanding of the sources of the cost of iteration. This cost has two components: reconfiguration costs and exploration costs, both of which must be low to support artful making.

Reconfiguration Costs
When we set up a process for making something and then run that process, we get a particular outcome. If we re-run that same process without changing it, we'll get that same outcome. Changing the process so that it yields a new outcome generates a cost of reconfiguration. In car making, for example, reconfiguring might involve expensive retooling, buying new equipment, even changing the layout of a plant. As we have seen, reconfiguring in software development can be relatively inexpensive, given appropriate investments in enabling technologies and design skills. Theatre production arranges and rearranges the actions and interactions of the performers, also inexpensively. Hence, software development as well as other business activities can be, in this regard, more like rehearsal than car making.

Exploration Costs
The second component of the cost of iteration is the cost of trying something that doesn't work well enough to continue doing it. In an industrial setting, we might think of exploration costs as "scrap costs." It's expensive to throw away physical prototypes. When the cost of exploration is high, you want to avoid making too many throwaways. Similarly, a doctor must consider that iteration may have unacceptable impacts on patients. Trying out different medications might have a cost measured in inconvenience or discomfort; trying and trying again in surgery might kill or maim someone. Software development, by contrast, routinely generates "bad" versions as a way to explore possibilities. These versions are not released for customer use and can be fixed as early as the next day with a new build. Here, too, software development is more like rehearsal than manufacturing; in theatre, there is not much lost when actors try something that doesn't "work" because something different can be tried in the next rehearsal.

The General Applicability of Artful Making
Some business activities other than software development also have a low cost of iteration – strategy making at Sun, for instance. Much of what we call "knowledge work," when supported by appropriate enabling technologies, can be structured so that doing and doing again doesn't cost much relative to the benefits of experience. Provided there is a need for innovation in such settings, artful making is the recommended approach. Applying more industrial, planning-intensive, or goal-directed approaches in these conditions makes no sense.