‘What values and practices can hold people together as the institutions in which they live fragment?’ Richard Sennett asks in his recent book The Culture of the New Capitalism (2006, Yale University Press). One antidote he suggests to the ‘spectre of uselessness’ that haunts so many today, is craftsmanship – broadly conceived as doing something well for its own sake.

Working on the launch of CHE’s consultancy service (see this article) I was alarmed to read Sennett’s analysis of the consultant’s role as being in complete contrast to that of craftsman. Where the craftsman ‘digs deep into an activity to get it just right’, the consultant ‘swoops in but never nests’, often with little understanding of the organisation and its activities – and with no long term interest in, or responsibility for, their results.

Long before I joined CHE, I had experience of that sort of consultancy: where consultants were engaged by a board to ‘recommend’ reorganisation and redundancies, while allowing them to deny responsibility: ‘we asked the experts – we can’t waste money by ignoring their recommendations’.

Craftsmanship is fundamental to being a human ecologist: acting for enduring change requires continually developing understanding and skills – and engaging with compassion and integrity. At CHE Consulting we aim to be rooted in craftsmanship, and while a project may last only a short time we want to make a long term difference for every client – and for the planet.