Maker vs. Manager in the Social Sectors

Are you a maker or a manager?  The question rarely has an easy answer.  In his classic article Maker’s Schedule, Managers’ Schedule, Paul Graham defines makers as anyone in the workplace creating things like code, crafts or books. This maker approach requires long, unbroken segments of time throughout the day to produce these products.  Managers divide their day into one hour or less segments and check in with a lot of different people and groups to make sure a project or goal is on track. Both roles are essential for any organization or social mission, but each requires a unique mindset, scheduling approach, and way of working. Graham himself works on a maker schedule, but also manages the Y Combinator, a group that helps form and launch new companies. 

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Graham originally wrote this article to explain why programmers writing code hate meetings, but the idea resonates for the Social Sector. For people doing difficult and focused work such as writing or designing, one meeting can disturb an entire half day of work. This is because the producer must switch tasks and change the mode of work from deep focus, toward interacting. Conversely, switching tasks is a natural part of the day for any manager looking at the big picture. However we know from cognitive science that changing tasks is disastrous to the focus and output of a maker, taking up to half an hour or more to refocus on the original task. 

In the wider Social Sector, we have both makers and managers at work.  Makers create analysis, designs, documents, books, articles. Managers hold meetings,  make calls, have personal interactions, and adjust along the way to get the work done.

In my focus area of international disaster response, makers at the field level are physically going out and delivering water, food and shelter. Other makers are creating analysis, documents and maps to support that delivery. Managers in the humanitarian field are having coordination meetings, reading the analysis and environment, and making decisions about how to best help people hit by disasters and wars. 

Evaluating ourselves and our work  
Evaluating our own work style aspirations helps understand our goals and current reality. Do we aspire to be makers or managers? How is our work currently divided between these two poles? Taking a look at the written details for our day and week can help us analyze how much time we are spending on each approach. 

A common pattern in Social Sector work, and a reality in my life as a disaster response professional, is that we are asked to do a mix of making and managing on a daily basis. Even a dedicated project manager must also produce reports and sit down to think deeply about progress metrics. Likewise, a writer, creator, or contractor who is doing deep work to produce analysis must also increasingly manage the business aspects of promoting and distributing the things they make. 

Grahame points out that maker and manager schedules can co-exist if they never interact. The problem comes when we mix the maker and manager approach. It is impossible to do good writing or deep work in half hour segments. Likewise, you cannot run a high performing Social Sector organization with no meetings and low interaction. 

Mixing maker and manager
Meetings are the flash point of interaction between makers and managers. Makers hate meetings because it distracts them from their core making task. Managers love meetings because they get information and understanding about progress that they use as input to determine if a project is on track. 

We have too many meetings in the Social Sectors. Meetings feed the wrong headed desire to have consensus for every decision. They create the illusion of collaboration, and make people feel like they are being productive, often without real gain to the organization or toward the common cause. A meeting is an experience. We create a joint memory that is often a positive association of absorbing and sharing ideas. But what was the result? Too often it is the sharing of information that we could have passed in other ways, rather than a critical decision that required deliberation and input by all. 

Here are a few ways to use the maker-manager dichotomy to improve your Social Sector work, and help your organization increase its capacity:

Define our own mix of maker vs. manager - Do we want to be a maker or a managers? What is the reality of our current role? What is the tension between those two desires? Look at you schedule for the day and week. Define what your maker vs. manager reality and goal. I often see people who want to be makers, but have taken on a managerial roles. They thirst after the technical work but have ‘risen’ up through the ranks. This can lead to a yearning for  the total focus and satisfaction that comes with deep work. Other colleagues want to manage and influence organizational direction but feel stuck in a maker role.

Batch our meetings - Make sure they all happen at one time during the week, back to back like ‘office hours’ for a professor. This groups distraction into one part of the week, leaving unbroken blocks of time available for deep work using the maker approach. 

Turn off distraction - When you are in maker mode, turn off text and email alerts, close all other browser windows, and go ahead and ‘make’ things. Let's not try to manage as we make. Do one, then do the other. This reduces the cognitive cost of switching tasks and creates an enjoyable present-state flow. 

Keep track of what we do each day and week - This allows tracking and adjustment to ways that we are spending our time. This looks like a basic spreadsheet for me. It is also easy to track this with pen and paper. 

An example from my week
In my work today, I manage some projects, but am also a core producer for other initiatives where I conduct analysis, create designs, and write. I divide total working time per week roughly between 60% maker, 40% manager roles.  When managing, I batch meetings, emails and chat interactions to discrete times throughout the day and week. During the maker times of the day and week, I try to turn off distractions and produce documents, presentations and analysis with minimal distraction. My aspiration is to move to 20% manager / 80% maker in the future as I have recently enjoyed the flow and satisfaction of bringing writing and data visualizations into the world. 

Maker-manager distinctions also apply to life outside of work. There is plenty of managing that comes with taking care of the mechanics of life, whether we have kids or not. Managing  also includes the type of interactions that you have at a party with friends, or the one on one time we spend catching up with people we care about. ‘Making’ can be cutting the grass, cleaning up or doing that bedtime routine with the kids. As with any making or managing work, recovery is essential to prepare mind and body to do good work over a long period of time. 

So, do you want to be a maker or a manager? How do you allocate your focus? Hit me up on email or leave a comment on the blog. 

Happy trails!





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