THE DILEMMA OF DOING
There are times that I reflect on how much I “do’ in this world to make it a better place and often I feel like I am not doing enough. You know, like helping in a soup kitchen, cheering shut ins, collecting names for a petition on some cause, or even working for an election of someone. Ok, that last one, really does not cross my mind, but the others do. We constantly see and hear about people “doing” all kinds of things to make this world a little better. And I think I did that for years in making the workplace a better place. But, now, I do not get engaged much. And I wonder…
This is a real dilemma for anyone wanting this world to be different. But, how do we do that? Where do we engage? What comes back to me, was a little event way back in my early Cummins days. I was working with some managers in the main production plant, and, at times, there was some tension around what I was trying to do and what they worried/worked/attended to on an everyday basis. They were constant “firefighters” who busied themselves on what was broken, what was stopped, what was a customer screaming about, etc. They lived a life of reaction to the current crisis. I did not and would not help with that.
It was pretty amazing that they let me spend time with them, since I did little to help them with these monumental and momentary problems. Usually, when these big problems came up, they would just politely put me off until a lull in the action. Then they would tolerate my suggestions that the game had to change, but really, they did not have a clue how we could do that. And this is the heart of the matter.
When you participate in the “fixing” of the game as it is, you essentially perpetrate the game. You make an untenable system last longer than it needs to. It should be left to die and be replaced with a more advanced system. To “help” in the game as it is currently played, gives people the false idea that this system can be made to work in the long term. It can’t and it won’t. So, that is my manufacturing connection. So be it with the world in general. It is all holographic.
The vast majority of people in this world are trying to make the game we have, work. Trying to make countries work, religions work, economies work, individualism work, and all sorts of other mechanisms that separate humans from each other. We try to feed the hungry when we have a system that fails that task. So we try to prop that failed system up, by not letting people die of starvation. And when they don’t, we pat ourselves on the back and reward our self for “saving the poor”. Just like the guys in the factory, who would break out the bottle, and reward themselves for getting a “glitch” in the system remedied and get the latest shipment out the door. Aren’t we great, we made the lousy system work, in spite of itself.
Now, I know this can sound harsh to those who believe in the “system”, but this is what we do. We go to war and kill people so we can preserve a system of separation and sincerely believe we have done the right thing. We constantly “fix” the problems created by an un-unified system, and give out Nobel Peace prizes for those who achieved this. We have built in ways to reward those who maintain a lousy system, which keeps alive that desire to “do things” that help the world. And what we do, is help the world continue on in an untenable way. Just like the guys in the factory. Tlane 1/18/12
A little addendum here, since some may ask, “well what do I do?”. Read a great quote the other day that said, “human beings consistently overestimate how much they can change others, and vastly underestimate how much they can change them self”… That is the only work to do.
Some thoughts on fire-fighting.
A few weeks ago, I was visiting my son. In the middle of the night we were awakened by a garage fire that had broken out across the street, to the right of the house directly in front of my son’s house. The fire department arrived. Before all the hoses were filled, an explosion (later determined to be from a gas leak) engulfed the entire house. The fire-fighters fought the fire for several hours. Had they done nothing, the damage to adjoining houses would have been worse than it was.
Should the fire-fighting not be done? Should the system take care of itself by letting the fire take its course?
I have also noted, as you have, that fighting fires in the factory (in the figurative sense), responding to one crisis after another, takes the place of really doing something to change the system that causes the crises. Fire-fighting also becomes addictive. Years ago, I read that fire-fighters are more likely to be arsonists than non-fire-fighters.
I worked with a plant where an earthquake caused the roof to cave in, causing huge loses, and making he factory inoperable for several weeks. Management and workers took great pride in rising to the occasion, cleaning up the mess and getting the building repaired. They even made a video of the process. They did not show the same pride in their continuous improvement program.
I agree with you that there is a dilemma. Do you let people starve because the system allows it, when you can give them something to eat? I think the answer somewhere in what we used to advocate (and once-in-a-while see realized) in our kaizen work. When you react to a problem, also stop and ask, what an we do so this never happens again. Programs such as “Save the Children” do not seem to do this. On the other hand, India has, for the first time, gone for a full year without a single case of polio. This is the result of efforts to improve public health to get everyone vaccinated. AIDS can be prevented with health education and use of condoms. Perhaps someday there will a vaccine. This can be done along with providing palliative medication to people who already have AIDS.
My experience is that fire-fighting often gets in the way of system improvement. I am not sure that means we shouldn’t put out the fire.
Bob
Again, another thoughtful addition from Bob. He presents the dilemma quite well and I want to take it to a next higher level. At a physical level, using the approach Bob suggests is very helpful, but what do we do, when the issue is at a consciousness level. At Kaizen, we spent a lot of time trying to get execs to look at the whole company in a different way, because we knew that if that did not happen, all the work at the physical level of production would be short lived.
So, all the wonderful “doing” so many people contribute every day, and keep on doing, will not ever change unless more and more people change the way the see the world as a whole. If there is not some shift in some critical mass of people, then we are condemned to fire fighting. tom
One last point here. I used to use the idea of actual fire fighters in teaching system change. I would paint a scenario of the time before building code, electrical code, and other rules about how you do construction. There were lots of fires (think the great Chicago fire) and some people could reason that we just need more fireman and bigger trucks. But some smart systemic people decided to understand why we had so many fires and begin to make rules to outlaw bad designs and practices. Now we have far fewer fires and we will always need some firemen, but it is an example of what I am talking about. It is just a bigger system. tom