The title of this website is Manufacturing in the 21st Century – My Observations.
In this site, I will be charting the journey of marrying the world of work to the world of the soul in order for us to perform meaningful work. This may take the form of book or movie reviews, lean and improvement kata journeys and other observations and attempts to find ways to make work meaningful.
As David Whyte says, the language that we currently have in our businesses isn’t large enough to hold the growth that needs to occur.
Just recently, an intern from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo shared a poem that she read to her electronics lab. First of all, the fact that a poem was read in an engineering course strikes me as something I never thought would happen. Second, even though she probably doesn’t realize it, is a strike in the face of science and the need to prove, dissect and analyze while rejecting any truth that comes from within ourselves. Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks about this often.
A poem from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance
” To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,… A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.”
I will use language from the psychology of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Buddhism, David Whyte’s insights, poetry, brain research and many other sources. Sometimes there will be sidetrips that don’t seem related but there is a deeper connection.
I remember when I was a new engineer and was at the crossroads deciding the type of language to use – business jargon or creative. It was as if my brain had to decide which circuits to turn on. My job was influencing me to use bland, boring engineering and business terms, but my creative side wanted to be expressive to speak to the inner being. After much turmoil, I picked the latter. It resulted in many puzzled looks but I persisted and am glad that I did.
The website’s purpose is not to be an instruction on how to implement lean or six sigma processes. It is not a plea for more manufacturing in America or what is wrong with the state of the union.