Editorial
Are you an engineer? A scientist? An artist? A manager? All should read Work Study – because productivity is a multi-skilled, multi-cultural,multi-talented issue. It demands input from all – because it is so important. It is higher productivity that will bring us closer to being able to feed or heal the world. That, though, is not the topic for this editorial. For this, I am interested in the breadth of individuals, not the breadth of readership. Good productivity professionals are themselves multi-skilled and multi-talented; of course, they work better in a good, multi-functional team– but individually they are better equipped to be innovators if they retain a broadly-based approach to work and life.
What sparks this comment is that I was recently in a meeting discussing the quantification, or measurement, of working processes. All present agreed that quantification is important – for reasons too many to enumerate here, but I guess readers of this column will know most of them. We then had a discussion on types of quantification – and I referred to the use of "proxy measures". I had to explain what I meant – the use of an existing measure to "stand for" something that might be too costly to measure – or simply unnecessary. For example, if we need to know how many oil seals we have produced, we can use an existing count of the products that the oil seals go into – and calculate the number of oil seals (making some allowance for scrap and loss and … ). All present accepted the principle – but did not like the term "proxy measure" and suggested that it was confusing for the audience we were likely to (subsequently) use it with.
I argued that the terms "proxy" and "measure" were both inherently simple words within the English language and that the two combined into one term should be simple to understand. However, I was overruled –and I had to find another way of describing a simple concept – using far more words.
I then wondered whether the people in the group were "engineers" or"scientists" with a "science", not an "arts", education. We do tend to limit the breadth of education through early specialism in the UK.(This is not the case around the globe where some countries maintain a very general education until quite late in educational life.)
Which – naturally – led to the question of whether the educational system promotes or inhibits fresh thinking, innovation – and higher productivity. This is a major issue arising from a chance item in a meeting– but one that must be addressed.
There have been a few papers in Work Study recently which have suggested that the education of engineers (in particular) is too limited –and that the education of managers often omits any elements of "engineering". These two groups therefore do not communicate with each other; neither strongly values the other sphere of activity; the value that could be added by having them work closely together is not realised.
All my inclination – and experience – tells me that education should be as broad as possible – but it cannot be both very broad and very deep. So, at what age should we expect students to narrow down to a very limited subject area – and is it possible to do this whilst retaining an interest in "the wider world"?
Such questions are too big to be answered by me – or within the pages of Work Study. Yet, as productivity professionals – and responsible adult human beings – we have a keen interest in the debate and should join it.
John Heap
