The Overlap Blog

Below are Richard Farson’s notes expanding upon comments he offered towards the end of Overlap.

—–

Give up being professionals……become metaprofessionals

Define Meta: A higher science of the same nature but dealing with more fundamental problems. (OED)

Becoming metaprofessionals is the only way to address the great design challenges of this century.

At this time, no profession is organized to meet its true goals

Take psychology. Since one quarter of the world’s people have serious psychological difficulties, even if we doubled the size of the mental health professions and worked around the clock our effect would be infinitesimal. We must find ways to use lay resources, paraprofessionals, mass media, Internet, automated systems, etc.

Similarly, every profession must become a metaprofession—find ways for others to use what we know.

There are not enough designers to do the jobs I’m talking about, to meet the great social and planetary challenges.

It means you must become designers of design, orchestrating the work of others, raising your sights to include new challenges.

If all this seems overwhelming, remember, those who are doing what they were trained to do are obsolete.

The new management learning: Must destroy what works to try something risky, but might work better. Marshall McLuhan “If it’s working, it’s obsolete.”

As a social scientist, I would like to offer more measured, more complex, more nuanced advice, but I’m afraid it boils down to a rather simple choice you must make—you can develop the leadership that will enable you to build a better world, achieve real progress toward sustainability and meet the other goals you have cherished since you were students, OR you can continue the protectionism and commoditization and demeaning practices that now characterize the profession. I don’t see how you can have both leadership and the status quo.

Designers can still do business with business—but without expectations, and with the power of your professional standing—as peers.

While the big jobs are fixing the world, you can still do grand homes and buildings…..what I call gourmet architecture. Just because one is working on the problem of world hunger doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cook gourmet meals.

Designers already have what most leaders need. Designers are already good at seeing things in context, already understand the sweep of history, already are conversant in the arts, sciences and humanities (as are the best leaders), already are good at working in ensembles, already are environmentally aware, already understand the limits of technology, its backfiring nature, already are capable of a high level of creative thinking, already can appreciate the esthetic dimensions of leadership, its gracefulness and beauty.

The first step, then, is for designers to begin to imagine themselves as leaders – of design firms, of communities, of cultural organizations, of corporations, of government, of society.

Designers do not need to position themselves as second to anyone.

Tall order? Remember, big changes are easier to make than small ones.

You have a secret weapon: Why, in novels and movies, does the architect always get the girl? The psychologist doesn’t. It’s not because the architect knows how to fix electric plugs. It’s because architects have a special mystique.

Throughout history architects are associated with greatness, with creativity and beauty and strength and the courage and drama of designing and building a great cathedral or thrilling skyscraper or a lush park or an exciting and beautiful city or a simple, elegant home.

None of the rest of the professions has quite that powerful a mystique. That’s why the girl always goes for the architect.

Society will go for the architect too. Give society a chance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 10:22 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.