creative and custodial work: a binary

Here’s a binary for you to gnaw on: let’s say there are two kinds of work — the creative and the custodial. In creative work, you create. You make new stuff, you make new categories, you make new connections. You start up, you iterate, you experiment and scale.

In custodial work, you tend and maintain. You care for. You defend what has already been made.

Team by team, mission by mission, I find that the most inspired and sustained work comes from those who infuse custody with creativity and vice versa. They accept the binary but don’t fall prey to a good/bad ; hot/cold view of the two types. They see the inherent worth of both and they seek to carry the values of one into the other.

Certain pros are drawn to one of these binary halves by default. Something about creation or about custody stirs their spirit and soothes their ego at once. They can build an identity on this preference, issue moral judgements of those who prefer the other. They can feel entitled to exclusive habits of mind that go with and entrench their preference.

I think what I’m getting at here is that last bit - the best creators and caretakers I’ve seen, the ones who build cultures that endure, where people can grow, they don’t feel entitled to ignore the other half. They’re energized by embracing both, folding one into the other.

-eric