Shipulski On Design

Anything that happens happens because of people, and anything that doesn’t happen doesn’t happen because of people.  Technology doesn’t create itself, products don’t launch themselves, companies don’t build themselves and trust doesn’t grow on its own.  Any kind of work, any kind of service, any kind of organizing – it’s all done by people.

The productivity/quality movement has been good for factories – parts move in a repeatable flow and they’re processed in repeatable ways by machines that chunk out repeatable output.  Design the process, control the inputs and turn the crank. Invest in the best machines and to do the preventative maintenance to keep them in tip-top shape.  Just follow the preventive maintenance (PM) schedule and you’ll be fine.  But when the productivity/quality movement over-extended into the people domain, things don’t go as well.

People aren’t machines, and their work product is not cookie-cutter parts.  And, there’s no standard PM schedule for people. We all know this, but we behave like people are machines – we design their work process, train them on it and measure their output. But machines are iron-based entities that don’t have consciousness and people are carbon-based beings with full consciousness.  The best machines do what their told, but the best people tell you what to do.  Machines and people are fundamentally different, but how we run them is markedly similar.

Where machines need oil, people need empathy. And for empathy you need vulnerability and for that you need trust. But there’s no standard PM schedule for trust.  There’s no flowchart or troubleshooting protocol for helping people.  What work do you give them? It depends. When do you touch base and when do you leave them alone? It depends. How much responsibility do you give them? It depends.  With machines it’s follow the PM schedule and with people – it depends.

Where machines wear out, people develop and grow. And to grow people you need to see them as they are and meet them where they are. And to do that you’ve got to see yourself as you are.  You can’t give people what they need if you add to the drama with your reactivity and you can’t discern their suffering from your projections if you’re not grounded. How much time do you spend each day to learn to dampen your reactivity?  How much time do you spend to slow your monkey mind so you can see your projections?

With machines it’s control the inputs and get what you got last time.  With people it’s maybe; it depends; don’t worry about how it will go; and why don’t you try? Growing people is much more difficult than keeping machines running smoothly.  But, there is nothing more fulfilling than helping people grow into something they couldn’t imagine.

Image credit – Benjamin Balazs

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