This summer I took a couple of pottery classes. The first time since I had 9 weeks of it in art class in high school a few decades ago.
I’m always up for something new and it started as a date-night idea from my husband. But it didn’t take long for the few skills I had from art class to come flooding back.
Center the clay on the wheel. Keep your hands balanced with equal pressure. Oh, and new twist is don’t try to make the electric wheel hit 90 mph (I was foot-powered all those years ago).
I had a vision of the shape I wanted to end up with. Nothing fancy, but plenty of personality. The next date night we took our pottery and trimmed it – smoothed out the edge, shaved down the thick parts, and made it that much closer to my vision.
When I flipped it over to even out the bottom, I also carved my initials, the date, and a heart because this was a project that brought me joy.
That little step got me thinking. A signature says I made this. I claim it as mine. And I”m fine for the entire world (or the people who come over for dinner) so see it and know that this is my work.
It made me wonder… how much of the work we do every day would we be willing to put our signature on?
If you like it then you shoulda put your name on it
Think about everything you did last week. Presentations, reports, proposals, strategies, emails, and if you’re anything like me, more than you share of documents named FINAL_v7_REALFINAL.
How much of it did you really put your taste, creative thinking, discernment, judgement, or point of view into it? I mean, to the degree that you’d be proud enough to carve your name into the bottom? (The heart’s optional)
We’re wicked good at delivering work that gets the job done. It’s accurate, on time, checks the box, and nobody complains. But when everything we do feels that way, we stop asking, “Is this good?” and start asking, “Is this done?”
Steve Jobs wanted signatures
In the early days of the Macintosh, Steve Jobs believed the team wasn’t simply manufacturing a computer. They were creating something closer to a work of art, and he famously beliefe that “real artists sign their work.”
So Steve had the team sign their names on a sheet of paper, and those signatures, including Steve’s, were reproduced inside the case of the Macintosh Plus computer.
Most customers would never see them. It was in the pre-marketing era as we know it now, so that wasn’t even the point. The signatures reminded the people making the computer that their names were permanently attached to what they created.
Imagine how that changes your standard for good enough.
Good enough is too easy
We have oodles of tech and tools that can draft, summarize, build, create, and organize pretty much anything in seconds.
The danger isn’t that these tools will produce terrible work. We notice terrible work.
The bigger danger is that they makes acceptable work so easy that we stop pushing for anything better.
It’s polished, competent, perfectly fine and completely forgettable. You sure wouldn’t sign it. You’d just submit it.
There’s a big whopping difference.
Curiosity and creative thinking start with caring enough to notice that something could be better. The obvious solution might not solve the real problem. The way we’ve always done it might not be the only way.
Not everything deserves that level of attention. Let tech handle the repetitive work and administrative sludge.
But use the time it gives you to care more about the work that actually deserves your fingerprints.
My pottery pieces have equal amounts of imperfections and character. I doubt anybody’s going to clear a shelf at the Met for them anytime soon. But I signed them anyway.
Maybe that’s a useful test for the work that matters most.
If you flipped it over, would you sign your name?
