Issue No. #18 |
20 October 2008 |
ISSN: 1532-1886 |
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A Happy Cog in the Machine by Carl
Wright
I usually write about rating and billing techniques and strategies. This
is different. This morning I watched a few minutes of a news show where
they were interviewing a famous actor. They were talking about how he now
wanted to have his life mean something and he wanted to do something that
made a difference. It sounded very grand and then very shallow. It struck
me watching this that he didn't understand how humans work and what they
work for.
I make rating systems and billing applications. I think my work is an
important part of the machinery that makes up a telecommunications provider,
but I'm sure others see it as just a small part of a much larger whole.
I won't argue it with them. We each make our own measurements of value
based on our own experiences.
Let's assume that my work is just a small thing. I'm just a cog in a much
larger machine. Usually the term "cog" is accompanied by an adjective
like "impersonal" or "unimportant". There have been
many books and movies portraying a struggle between the individual and
society. Sure, sometimes I feel that way, but it's a shallow view of reality.
I was drawn to a "deeper" view of my role when I read a portion
of an epic poem by R. Buckminster Fuller [Untitled Epic Poem on the History
of Industrialization (1962)]. I show an excerpt below.
Men sorting the mail on a train
moving between cities
“No individual may unaided accomplish a railroad system,
an automobile
(and the highway implicit to the automobile)
or an electric lighting network of more than toy proportions and characteristics.
The individual can hue wood
and fashion a chair by himself
and this handicraft he has performed for centuries,
but craft skill is ever less numerically essential to
the total industrial population and organization pattern
due to cooperative specialization in mechanical extension.
Informed skill has replaced craft skill and the only scarce factors
in high industrialization, -
besides comprehension of the phenomenon itself,
by society in general
are combined ingenuity, experience, imagination,
- an unshakable faith in a god of orderly meaning,
- and the will to sacrifice self for others in setting the pace,
- advancing the standards of performance
However,
man unconcernedly sorting mail on an express train
with unuttered faith that the engineer is competent,
that the switchmen are not asleep,
that the track walkers are doing their job,
that the technologists who designed the train
and the rails knew their stuff,
that thousands of others
whom he may never know by face or name are collecting tariffs,
paying for repairs, and so handling assets
that he will be paid a week from today and again the week after
that,
and that all the time his family is safe
and in well being without his personal protection
constitutes a whole new era of evolution
the first really "new" since the beginning of the spoken
word.
In fact, out of the understanding innate in the spoken word was Industrialization
wrought
after milleniums of seemingly witherless spade work.
and evolving the new standard prototypes worth mass reproducing.”
Summary
We all have a role in larger organizations. We each have individual desires
and needs that clash with our roles. You may think that you do your part
just for the money, but you're wrong. Sure, you need and want the money,
but studies often show that we won't leave a job just because the money is
better elsewhere. We like the people we work with; we like knowing that our
work matters. Now, I hope you'll join me in realizing that your work is indispensable
to you, your family, your friends, to everyone. Cast aside the idea that
your "little job" is unimportant.
Tell Me What You Want To Hear About
The subjects that I cover in Rating Matters are driven by my personal interests
in rating and billing. These are limited by the breadth of my personal experience.
Please let me know about items you want to hear about or you'd like explored
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