I can buy these as character sketches of two imaginary individuals, but are there actual clusters in peoplespace here? There’s a huge amount of burdensome detail in them.
It’s not burdensome detail; its a list of potential and correlated personality traits. You don’t need the conjunction of all these traits to qualify. More details provide more places to relate to the broad illustration I’m trying to make. But I’ll try to state the core elements that I want to be emphasized, so that it’s clearer which details aren’t as relevant.
Professionals are more interested in achieving results, and do not have a specific attachment to a philosophy of process or decision-making to reach those results.
Auteurs are very interested in process, and have strong opinions about how process and decision-making should be done. They are interested in results too, but they do not treat it as separate from process.
And I’ll add that like any supposed personality type, the dichotomy I’m trying to draw is fluid in time and context for any individual.
But I think it’s worth considering because it reflects a spectrum of the ways people handle their relationship with their work and with coworkers.
Essentially, treat it as seriously as a personality test.
Exactly. The world is complicated, apparently contradictory characteristics can co-inhabit the same person, and frameworks are frequently incorrect in proportion to their elegance, but people still think in frameworks and prototypes so I think these are two good prototypes.
I think you’re being a bit harsh though—the problem with personality tests and the like is not that the spectrums or clusters they point out don’t reflect any human behavior ever at all, it’s just that they assign a label to a person forever and try to sell it by self-fulfilling predictions (“Flurble type personalities are sometimes fastidious”, “OMG I AM sometimes fastidious! this test gets me”).
Professional/Auteur is a distinction slightly more specific than personality types, since it applies to how people work. It comes from the terminology of film, where directors range from hired-hands to fill a specific void in production to auteurs whose overriding priority is to produce the whole film as they envision it, whether this is convenient for the producer or not. Reading and listening to writers talk about their craft, it’s also clear that there’s a spectrum from those who embrace the commercial nature of the publishing industry and try hard to make that system work for them (by producing work in large volume, by consciously following trends, etc.) to those who care first and foremost about creating the artistic work they envisioned. In fact, meeting a deadline with something you’re not entirely satisfied with vs. inconveniencing others to hone your work to perfection is a good example of diverging behavior between the two types.
There are other things that informed my thinking like articles I’d read on entrepreneurs vs. executives, foxes vs. hedgehogs, etc.
If I wanted to make this more scientific, I would focus on that workplace behavior aspect and define specific metrics for how the individual prioritizes operational and organization concerns vs. their own preferences and vision.
I can buy these as character sketches of two imaginary individuals, but are there actual clusters in peoplespace here? There’s a huge amount of burdensome detail in them.
It’s not burdensome detail; its a list of potential and correlated personality traits. You don’t need the conjunction of all these traits to qualify. More details provide more places to relate to the broad illustration I’m trying to make. But I’ll try to state the core elements that I want to be emphasized, so that it’s clearer which details aren’t as relevant.
Professionals are more interested in achieving results, and do not have a specific attachment to a philosophy of process or decision-making to reach those results.
Auteurs are very interested in process, and have strong opinions about how process and decision-making should be done. They are interested in results too, but they do not treat it as separate from process.
And I’ll add that like any supposed personality type, the dichotomy I’m trying to draw is fluid in time and context for any individual.
But I think it’s worth considering because it reflects a spectrum of the ways people handle their relationship with their work and with coworkers.
Essentially, treat it as seriously as a personality test.
Ah. That seriously. :)
Exactly. The world is complicated, apparently contradictory characteristics can co-inhabit the same person, and frameworks are frequently incorrect in proportion to their elegance, but people still think in frameworks and prototypes so I think these are two good prototypes.
Like Hogwarts houses? Star signs? MBTI? Enneagram? Keirsey Temperaments? Big 5? Oldham Personality Styles? Jungian Types? TA? PC/NPC? AD&D Character Classes? Four Humours? 7 Personality Types? 12 Guardian Spirits?
I made one of those up. Other people made the rest of them up. And Google tells me the one I made up already exists.
Where does Professional/Auteur come from?
One of these has pedigree!
I agree that human typology is often noise. Not always though, it can be usefully predictive if it slices the pie well.
Yes! Like those.
I think you’re being a bit harsh though—the problem with personality tests and the like is not that the spectrums or clusters they point out don’t reflect any human behavior ever at all, it’s just that they assign a label to a person forever and try to sell it by self-fulfilling predictions (“Flurble type personalities are sometimes fastidious”, “OMG I AM sometimes fastidious! this test gets me”).
Professional/Auteur is a distinction slightly more specific than personality types, since it applies to how people work. It comes from the terminology of film, where directors range from hired-hands to fill a specific void in production to auteurs whose overriding priority is to produce the whole film as they envision it, whether this is convenient for the producer or not. Reading and listening to writers talk about their craft, it’s also clear that there’s a spectrum from those who embrace the commercial nature of the publishing industry and try hard to make that system work for them (by producing work in large volume, by consciously following trends, etc.) to those who care first and foremost about creating the artistic work they envisioned. In fact, meeting a deadline with something you’re not entirely satisfied with vs. inconveniencing others to hone your work to perfection is a good example of diverging behavior between the two types.
There are other things that informed my thinking like articles I’d read on entrepreneurs vs. executives, foxes vs. hedgehogs, etc.
If I wanted to make this more scientific, I would focus on that workplace behavior aspect and define specific metrics for how the individual prioritizes operational and organization concerns vs. their own preferences and vision.