I am a scheduler by profession. According to my boss, they founded our group in my company about seven years ago because they needed people who would be trained to look at the big picture, instead of always trying to temporarily work around issues as they came, which is what Operations tends to do habitually in a company of this size. So essentially, an important part of my job is to think of how what we do today, impacts our tomorrow. If I fire people today because I am over-staffed, will I need them three months later? If I work overtime this weekend, will we be out of work next week? Things like that.. And for problems we notice to be repeatable or significant in nature, we know the issue needs a much deeper analysis - for this we seek the help of the Industrial Engineer - which is what I am by training.
You know one of the main reasons I like IE - it is because, by principle, IE's are supposed to be the fix-it people- which is something I have always loved to be! IE's have tools for everything- to determine root cause of a problem, to predict and account for inherent risks to a process, to determine how things are supposed to be versus how they are, to eliminate non-value added activities in a process, even to study human behavior. They may not always be effective in the first go, but if applied correctly, can really help lay out all the pieces of the jigsaw.
If you think about it, the above skill-sets are exactly what is required to solve all of life's complexities!
Make a new friend? - okay, look at the big picture - is this relationship going to be a season pass, or is it a lifetime membership? Invest your resources accordingly.
Trust too often and too soon? - make an Ishikawa diagram of what is wrong with your own brain that makes you do that - fix the root cause, and your failure rate will drop.
I understand that mastering the above techniques to, what crazed psychologists call, "whole-hearted living", would essentially make us akin to God - but hell, what if we all had a few God-like qualities? Okay, if not a lifelong plan, even the ability to foresee the next one year would be appreciated by many a humans, don't you think?! Life's mysteries be damned! :P
Talking of psychologists - people doing research in psychology, every-day human behavior and interpretation, social work, happiness (yes! people do research in happiness too!) like to come up with verbiage for what they think gives people a "sense of fulfillment" in life. I've heard of words like connection, compassion, vulnerability, choice, courage, purpose, meaning etc etc. Well, it's 2.15 AM on a Friday morning and my head is swirling with a ragoût of unasked questions, unwanted answers, questionable actions and unanswerable reactions; and I can come up with only two things every human being seeks out in this lifetime -
1. To be seen, really seen.
2. To know they are not alone.
If only someone invested their time and research grants on figuring out tools, real concrete tools, that would help us do that instead of beating about the bush all the time. If only we didn't have to untangle the mess and pave the path by ourselves all the time...
You know one of the main reasons I like IE - it is because, by principle, IE's are supposed to be the fix-it people- which is something I have always loved to be! IE's have tools for everything- to determine root cause of a problem, to predict and account for inherent risks to a process, to determine how things are supposed to be versus how they are, to eliminate non-value added activities in a process, even to study human behavior. They may not always be effective in the first go, but if applied correctly, can really help lay out all the pieces of the jigsaw.
If you think about it, the above skill-sets are exactly what is required to solve all of life's complexities!
Make a new friend? - okay, look at the big picture - is this relationship going to be a season pass, or is it a lifetime membership? Invest your resources accordingly.
Trust too often and too soon? - make an Ishikawa diagram of what is wrong with your own brain that makes you do that - fix the root cause, and your failure rate will drop.
I understand that mastering the above techniques to, what crazed psychologists call, "whole-hearted living", would essentially make us akin to God - but hell, what if we all had a few God-like qualities? Okay, if not a lifelong plan, even the ability to foresee the next one year would be appreciated by many a humans, don't you think?! Life's mysteries be damned! :P
Talking of psychologists - people doing research in psychology, every-day human behavior and interpretation, social work, happiness (yes! people do research in happiness too!) like to come up with verbiage for what they think gives people a "sense of fulfillment" in life. I've heard of words like connection, compassion, vulnerability, choice, courage, purpose, meaning etc etc. Well, it's 2.15 AM on a Friday morning and my head is swirling with a ragoût of unasked questions, unwanted answers, questionable actions and unanswerable reactions; and I can come up with only two things every human being seeks out in this lifetime -
1. To be seen, really seen.
2. To know they are not alone.
If only someone invested their time and research grants on figuring out tools, real concrete tools, that would help us do that instead of beating about the bush all the time. If only we didn't have to untangle the mess and pave the path by ourselves all the time...
3 comments:
I agree with point no.2 on what every human being needs.
'You are not alone' or rather 'you have company' is sometimes a huge validation for life. (have experienced myself :P)
and I also love how awesome this post is!
thank u thank u! :)
nice post...frankly speaking even our QC tools could be implemented in our real life to improve our productivity..and reduce non conformities in life...hehe...regarding your last point...you forgot the most important thing ...which not many look for..is inner peace...rest doesn't matter...being seen...be alone...would be meaningless if you found inner peace...)
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