Why does corporate work not feel as nourishing to the “soul” than, say, an artist’s or an artisan’s work might? Why is there a general longing among us for the artist’s world? A clue to this hides in the corporate worker or leader’s conception of “escape” - removing oneself from the place of work (offsites, workshops) or doing a thing that is entirely different in purpose than the work itself (charity drives, sports contests). We essentially long to move out of the physical and psychological realities of the work itself, and move back into a more individually-centered alternative version of it. An artist expresses themselves through their work. Whether they do it skillfully or effectively is a factor of, among other things, how integrated their taste is and how much they master the mechanics of their work. But a corporate member’s work, even when done competently, is often a suppression of their self.

Corporate work must necessarily cross the boundaries of the individual, survive changes in personnel, meet legal and commercial obligations, and remain understandable to people who did not make it for transfer to be possible. “Sameness”, in essence, is a prized feature in this environment. Individual sovereignty is, somewhat understandably, something to be skeptical about. Over time, this baseline skepticism of individual expression has calcified into near-hostility. This is a natural consequence of the many societal forces the institution of corporate work faces regularly. While industry groups, individual companies, and titans of industry have found ways to fight back against regulation and conflicts of ownership, the individual employee is, structurally, under-represented. Thus, individuation has been an easy “give” in these societal negotiations. There is enough of an established rhythm to this phenomenon that corporate workers now subconsciously know that any little ripple in their company’s ecosystem will soon travel all the way through the value chain and sit on top of each of them as another imposed rule or restriction.

Sameness, in today’s corporate world, has essentially been consecrated. Art has always desecrated sameness, valuing it even more than competence. Companies have mostly stopped asking where sameness is necessary and have been treating it as a good in itself. Work is praised as “aligned”, “objective”, “scalable”, and “professional” partly because no particular person remains visible within it. The work itself may be intelligent, profitable, and admired. But the relationship between the makers and what they made is lost or not even allowed to develop. They can find their labor in the result but not the judgment that made it their own. The work, ultimately, appears to have been produced by the company itself.

So, does this suffocating constraint of sameness make it impossible to author work done in a corporate setting? Not necessarily. Artists have to work with constraints too. They work with bound material, limitations in technique, scarce money, difficult patrons, incompatible audiences, and time. Constraint itself has never prevented work from bearing the mark of its maker. But the constraints in the corporate world do feel psychologically uglier. Corporate workers often inherit old promises, uneven teams, political tensions, commercial demands, regulations, damaged systems, mixed motives, and decisions made years earlier. They must create with people they did not choose and answer to consequences beyond their own satisfaction. This demands a higher tolerance for ugliness - compromised beginnings, unresolved disagreements, partial victories, awkward early forms, mixed motives, and unclear accountabilities. A person who needs elegant systems, coherent colleagues, pure motives, and conditions already suited to their taste has two common escapes: remain outside the work as its disappointed critic, or sterilize the organization until nothing independent survives. But neither of those options brings them the pride that we crave.

The key to finding a way to author one’s work, i.e., make the work an expression of one’s self, in the corporate world might just be an understanding detachment with sameness. One understands why sameness needs to exist, one understands that things are ugly and not naturally oriented towards individual motivation, but one still deftly creates space for creation. Understanding what the imposed constraints are but being carefully not to make them thicker than they need to be will likely create a lattice for one to operate in. Need to put your nuanced insight into an ugly company template to get sponsorship? Artfully articulate the thought to your own standard before transforming it into the uglier form that is presented. 

For executives, authorship is largely indirect because the work is done through other people. They author conditions like who receives real responsibility, which disagreements are allowed to survive, where process ends and judgment begins, whether unfamiliar work is developed or immediately normalized etc. They essentially have to paint on an abstract canvas. An executive who can grasp and process the complexity their job entails, understands that there is a certain inarticulable elegance to how a system can be developed and put to work when they have the freedom to do it. Deftly changing the shape and density of the system one manages, to make it fit within the lattice of constraints, is no less than art and no poorer a source of pride.

But sameness is not only imposed on the corporate worker. It also protects them. If the work bears no particular judgment, its failure cannot fully expose its maker. Consensus distributes responsibility and process provides an alibi. Institutional language allows a person to speak without being caught saying exactly what they believe. The constraints may be real, but we can also be guilty of making them thicker because their thickness gives us somewhere to disappear. This is the price of authorship that is easy to omit when looking longingly at artists. To recognize oneself in work that succeeds is also to recognize oneself in work that fails. The artist’s pride cannot be separated from the artist’s exposure. We cannot ask for the former while preserving the institution as protection from the latter. Corporate work can become distinctly yours, even in an ugly environment and on a shared canvas. But only if you leave enough of yourself in it to be judged.