“tradecraft”, or, how to lead like an international spy.
Lately I’ve been reading some spy novels by John Le Carre. A word he uses that I haven’t encountered anywhere else is “tradecraft.” It’s sprinkled all over Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
I like this word a lot. Le Carre uses it to capture the micro-moves that professional spies make - the discreet stuff that separates them from the amateurs. Subtle covering of tracks. Scanning new locations for trackers and devices. Setting up plausible alternate identities and safe houses.
These aren’t Mission: Impossible moves. They don’t make for breathtaking action sequences. It’s all the stuff the expert spy might do to prevent the need for jumping off a cliff on the motorcycle in the first place.
A couple other examples that don’t come from fiction or the sliver screen:
Tyler Cowen has published at least one blog post a day since 2003. He’s also an expert podcast host and has a day job as an economist at George Mason University. The core of his work is sharing knowledge with others. Reading and writing are his tradecraft. Cowen talks about tradecraft as “practicing your scales” - even the elite pianists commit to rigorous practice of subskills, the stuff that may never show up on stage in its raw form but underpins all the stuff that does.
If you’re into this sort of thing, Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning is a thrilling account of tradecraft in two disciplines in which he became a world champion: chess and competitive tai chi. With tai chi in particular, you get a literal blow by blow account of him committing to practice of micro-moves (in a sport that is basically all micro-moves).
There’s almost certainly tradecraft in what you do, too. It’s worth taking time to identify what the components are, calendar in regular time to practice them, and get feedback on them from expert practitioners. If you don’t have an expert just loitering around your office, a great question you can bring to any of your people to find the gaps in your tradecraft is, “What is something I’m not as good at as I think I am?”
If managing people is the core of your job, the thing you must be excellent at to succeed, I suggest the following as a few elements of your tradecraft:
hiring
defining a goal
narrating progress to goal
running a meeting
delivering feedback
communicating during a crisis
Pros don’t look at these things as tests of innate genius. Pros see them as opportunities to get really good at stuff that matters.
-Eric
