Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Anger

I did not work overtime last week, in part because the more I work the poorer my attitude became. Also, fundamentally I cannot change things by simply working more hours. Once I escalate an issue, that's all I can do. I can't turn every wrench. I can't say "stop, let's fix this issue now before it compounds" and expect anyone to listen to me. 

I mentioned at work that I quit caring. And when I said it, I suddenly felt terrible. So I've thought about that some more, and it's more complicated than simply quitting caring, but it's also basically quitting caring. What I mean is, I want to design a great machine, that can actually be manufactured and assembled repeatably with consistently high quality. However, I can't do it all, and there is no point to ruining my health getting all emotional over the things I don't directly influence, I more or less get paid by the hour to do a job. In other words, I could say, I have chosen to only care about a very small number of issues. 

It's really interesting to go through this process. The product design world is one where gravity is often ignored. Yet when assembling a machine gravity must be left turned on. Another side of it is, communication is critical. With so many different people and teams of people converging together to do a job, any failure to communicate results in poor quality. Part of my recent emotional negativity has to do with frustration over lack of communication. I suppose the way I have mitigated that on my side is let everyone know what I think they need to know, although I haven't been perfect at that either. What they do with that information, I don't care. 

It's a roller coaster. The highs are high but the lows are low. Soon enough this phase will pass, the weather will be warmer out, and one of my great hopes is that we are able to understand each other better and use that understanding to produce an extremely high quality product. Then I hope we don't forget these mistakes the next time around. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.