means that to get to the art you must master the craftâ, says novelist Ann ... the principle of uncertainty. Get out of your comfort zone. ... and get over it. Poor results ...
Figueiredo, A. D. (2012). What Can We Learn From the Crafts? DEI/CISUC Newsletter. Issue 1. May/June 2012. pp. 4-5.
The 100 views of EDO. Japanese Woodblock Ukiyo-e print by Master Ichiryusai Hiroshige. Circa 1857.
“Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft”, says novelist Ann Patchett. I believe that all human endeavors stand on the shoulders of craft. When we aim for perfection, and we do it with passion, we act as craftsmen. If you want to be a scientist, engineer, designer, teacher, student, you should master its craft. Here are a few principles that emerge from the crafts. Some of them are inspired in The Craftsman, an excellent book by sociologist Richard Sennett.
The principle of uncertainty. Get out of your comfort zone. Learn to excel in uncertainty. That’s what the early navigators did. That’s what today’s discoverers do. You cannot discover anything in territories that you already know. Explore the limits of the known. Get used to improvising. Expose yourself to chance. And don’t be afraid of failing. Failure is often the unique door to success. But don’t take unnecessary risks: great innovators follow opportunities, not risks. Risk-taking as the basis of innovation is an urban myth. Cultivate anticipation: equate possible outcomes and readjust as you progress. The principle of differentiation. Don’t be afraid of being different. Our hands are a powerful mechanism because they are different, they complement each other, and they are made up of different fingers. The uniformity of our schools has made us almost equal, and that’s one of the reasons why employers have so much
control: if one applicant does not accept a low wage, another (almost equal) will accept it. Cultivate your value so that it makes you different and irreplaceable. The solutions to the complex problems of our times can only be achieved when different people collaborate. For collective intelligence to emerge, diversity is essential.
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antónio dias de figueiredo*
The principle of imagination. A Spanish proverb says that “those who don’t build castles in the air never build castles anywhere”. Much of our knowledge is built through experimentation, but experimentation begins in our own minds, as we tentatively combine ideas and try to make sense of them. Try to use your mind as a space of possibility. Then, while dwelling safely in your mind, push possibility to the limit. Support your imagination with tools: sketches, mind maps, and scribbled notes can help you explore the exciting dialectical transformations that emerge when thinking and doing feed each other.
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view on What Can We Learn from the Crafts?
The principle of difficulty. A genuine craftsman recognizes the advantage of difficult tasks. Easy tasks don’t contain challenges. No challenges imply no innovation. When given easy tasks, designers often create additional difficulties, so that they can reformulate the problem, fuel creativity, open room for innovation, and end up with unique solutions. The path of least resistance is almost always a bad path. Get used to resisting frustration. Don’t ignore it and don’t fight it – face it, understand it, and get over it. Poor results, incomplete solutions, and ambiguous realities can offer fertile ground for innovation, if you are prepared to face difficulties. The principle of empathy. Empathy is our ability to put ourselves in the skin of other people and understand how vulnerable they feel. It is different from sympathy or compassion. Our social skills and our ability to lead people are deeply rooted in empathy. We cannot be genuine leaders if we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of those we lead. We cannot communicate or teach properly without feeling the difficulties of the people we are addressing. As psychologist Daniel Goleman pointed out in Emotional Intelligence, empathy is essential in all modes of relationship and collective knowledge.
The principle of the example. “Don’t say it, show it”. Actions speak better than words. Give examples, use metaphors and analogies, explore images, sketch diagrams, establish comparisons and adjacencies, invite the others to act and experiment. Most of the great leaders of all times did not tell their followers what to do. They did it, and the others followed. The principle of sustainable collaboration. If you want a collaboration to be sustainable, you must be concerned permanently, not just with your own interests, but also with the interests of the other parts. Otherwise, the other parts lose interest, the collaboration collapses, and everyone loses. So, if you want a collaboration to last, don’t forget to track the value it holds for the others. The principle of passion. Learn to love what you do and to do what you love. Avoid acting as the employee who has no commitment to his tasks and keeps waiting to be told what to do. If you take initiative, autonomy, enthusiasm, sense of accomplishment, and continuous improvement as an obsession, what you do can be as enjoyable as playing a game. In fact, it can be a game!
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*António Dias Figueiredo is an emeritus Professor and founder of the Department of Informatics Engineering
