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Meaningful manufacturing thesustainability of sense-giving

work

JimPlatts

The original protestant ethic

The 1650s in the UK was a period of considerableturmoil. The king had been abusing his power and

the parliamentary revolution was concerned to

find a balance. But those in authority in the

church had also been abusing their power. The

protestant revolution in response to this had two

elements to it. The first said: You do not stand

between me and my Maker. Get out of the way.

And the second said If I work hard at it, I can

find a way of working in which the tools of my

trade will help me develop my spirituality.

Plato said: Work is effort applied to difficulty.It always has internal as well as external results.

This understanding, that people can find them-

selves through what they do, lay at the core of the

protestant ethic which gave rise to the emancipa-

tion of the industrious (the real result of the

industrial revolution) and gave western civilisa-

tion its modern, inclusive structure. This structure

is professional and craft based, founded on deep

empathic respect for the many skills that enable

society to function and on the fruitful pooling of

these skills. Civilisation involves the skill of beingable to work together. Far beyond the obvious

utilitarian output (Platos external result), people

value themselves, indeed identify themselves,

through what they do. This awareness of the

internal dimension of work has shaped civic

society, and the respect that these empathic

relationships involve has meant that for some

300 years income distribution has been narrowing.

But in the last two or three decades, it has been

widening again. At its heart, the question is

whether society is based on (is going to be basedon) giving, or taking.

Richard Sennett (1998), in The Corrosion of

Character, writes with concern about the emer-

ging shallowness of all relationships through the

move to continuously flexible, short-term employ-

ment conditions in industry in the Anglo-Amer-

ican world. In essence, he considers that work that

had required professional and craft-based engage-

ment has been de-humanised in a Tayloristic way

so that significant engagement with the nature of

the work is no longer possible and people arereduced to working for money, controlled by fear.

People might earn a living but they cannot

generate pride in what they do. The particular

concern he voices is that no-one is able to generate

a meaningful storyline to their life any more. As a

result, in the UK, suicide is the largest cause of

death in young males facing a meaningless life.

In high ESTIEM

The ESTIEM network runs a Summer Academy

titled Deep Entrepreneurship Manufacturing

Europes Future. ESTIEM involves some 40,000

students in Eastern, Central and Western Europe,

Scandinavia, Russia and Turkey. For two weeks,

leading students from Europe almost go into

retreat to listen, learn, reflect and think deeply

about what manufacturing is for, what it does for

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and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.354

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humanity, not only in the useful products it

creates but the meaningful purpose it gives to

peoples lives in being producers, and the respon-

sibility this therefore gives leaders in manufactur-

ing industry for shaping society.

The aim of the ESTIEM Summer Academy is to

look at manufacturing as a craft, to focus on theprocess rather than the product, to look at the

growth of people through participation in that

process and to consider the responsibilities leaders

carry in that work. A Master/Apprentice form of

teaching is used. The aim is to achieve reflective

practitioners. The theme of the Summer Academy

is to understand the heritage of designing and

making that we share and how it relates to the

development of civilisation as we know it, not

simply the artefacts but the developed ability to

live and work together. The oldest professionalbody in the engineering world, the Institution of

Civil Engineers, was founded in 1818 by a group

of young men in London, who called themselves

civil engineers because they were not military

engineers. Their choice of title denoted the moral

sphere in which they worked. And at the

inaugural meeting on 2 January 1818, Henry

Robinson Palmer, 23, said:

Engineering is a profession which requires not

only knowledge of one leading branch of science

but of many; not only of one art but of an infinite

number. An engineer is a mediator between the

philosopher and the working mechanic; and like an

interpreter between two foreigners must under-

stand the language of both. (Watson 1988: 9)

The Summer Academy uses totally cross-cultural

material. While it is a carefully focused two weeks

of reflective study, it is built on Cambridges habit

of developing a one-to-one relationship with the

tutor, so each student receives intensive support

and attention. Their individual focus for the twoweeks is a thesis on a subject of particular interest

to them and related to their own self development

as someone who will be responsible for leadership

in some area of manufacturing or other and will

therefore shape other peoples lives. This thesis is

read and responded to as part of the teaching in

the usual Cambridge manner. But deeper than

this, the whole two week Summer Academy is

built on the deeply reflective teaching processes

which were developed (and are still sustained) by

the group of people known as Quakers in the

1650s, which embodies that original protestant

ethic and which provided the philosophical tap-

root for the whole of the industrial revolution.

The fruitful use of silence

In his detailed analysis of societies which have

created significant human growth, McClelland

(1961: 147, 36773) notes that in all cases people

from religious backgrounds who develop a highly

internalised awareness of and relationship with

God stand out compared to those who externalise

and ritualise their religious practice. It might be

deduced that the intensely reflective mentalpractices develop mental abilities which have

wider value. In looking at the protestant groups

involved in the industrial revolution McClelland

describes them as being permanently on their toes

with an alert, learning sensitivity, not driven by

self interest but by a deep concern to take the

initiative to do what is right. In trying to

understand the characteristics of these people,

McClelland quotes figures from Hagan (1961)

looking at the religious affiliation of significant

British innovators in the industrial revolutionperiod 17251850 (82 innovators), against the

proportions of the population of England, Wales

and Scotland in 1800 (a little over 10.8 million).

The figures are:

Non-conformists (less Quakers) 24% of innova-

tors from 5.8% of the population.

Quakers 10% of innovators from 0.2% of the

population.

This makes Quakers 70 times more creative of

human growth than the generality of the popula-tion. Because of their central role in this

transformation, the methods used by the Quakers

are worthy of study. Because they were excluded

from all professions and from universities, and

indeed in the 1660s from holding religious

gatherings within 5 miles of any borough with a

Royal Charter, most Quakers became craftsmen

and traders. The name Quaker is itself a

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nickname and a term of abusive mockery. Their

correct title is The Religious Society of Friends of

Truth, a name that indicates their central focus

on maintaining an awareness of first principles.

And it gives the lie to the nickname, because when

you stand before your Maker as a servant, in full

awareness of what you are doing, you quake. Intheir actions we can see the essential covenant,

holding tight to the principle and letting go of all

sorts of worldly benefits. Their protest which

was about the abuse of power was embodied in

the statement you do not stand between me and

my Maker, and their protestant action focused

on three issues:

that work, rightly focused, develops the

person doing it,

that work, rightly focused, produces some-thing of genuine value which develops the

person who receives it,

that surplus generated from the activity

grows the community.

They took the servant role. One principle they

identified was that in dealing with each other and

with other people, there was a right price which

was fair to all, and this could be found before-

hand. Trading was a matter of finding and

upholding the truth; it was not to do with power.

Here is George Fox writing in 1654 (1975: 169):

Many Friends, being tradesmen of several sorts,

lost their custom at first; for the people would not

trade with them nor trust them, and for a time

Friends that were tradesmen could hardly get

enough money to buy bread. But afterwards

people came to see Friends honesty and truthful-

ness and yea and nea at a word in their dealing,

and their lives and conversations did preach and

reach to the witness of God in all people, and they

knew and saw that, for conscience sake towards

God, they would not cozen and cheat them, and atlast that they might send any child and be as well

used as themselves, at any of their shops.

So then things altered so that all the enquiry was,

where was a draper or shopkeeper or tailor or

shoemaker or any other tradesman that was a

Quaker; insomuch that Friends had double the

trade, beyond any of their neighbours. And if there

was any trading they had it, inasmuch as then the

cry of all the professors and others was if we let

these people alone they will take the trading of the

nation out of our hands.

Of their view of custodianship, here is William

Penn in 1693 (1985: 12):

Lend not beyond thy Ability, nor refuse to lendout of thy ability; especially when it will help

others more than it can hurt thee.

If thy Debtor be honest and capable, thou hast thy

Mony again, if not with Encrease, with Praise: If

he prove insolvent, dont ruin him to get that,

which it will not ruin thee to lose: For thou art but

a Steward, and another is thy Owner, Master and

Judge.

The more merciful Acts thou dost, the more Mercy

thou wilt receive; and if with a charitable Imploy-

ment of thy Temporal Riches, thou gainest eternalTreasure, thy Purchase is infinite: Thou wilt have

found the Art of Multiplying indeed.

And they were totally pacifist and determined to

build civic society. Here is George Fox again,

articulating the principle demonstrated in all

Quaker action:

I live in the light of that Spirit which takes away

the causes of war.

For people doing this, it is this inner world of

meaning which is the real world, which theystrive to keep in focus. The physical world, and

the emotional world, both contain phenomena

which can act as bridges to reality when correctly

shaped. The task in all life is first to see and

understand the meaning and then to build the

bridges. These two skills, of noticing, and then of

creating an appropriate response, have to be

developed firstly as individual skills, and then as

leadership skills, so that they become group skills

embedded in society as civic competencies. In

Quaker tradition these four skills have beentaught, via what might be called masterclasses,

in a master/apprentice sense except that

Quakers would never think of it in those terms

for 350 years and are still taught today (Platts

2003). The four skills can be described as:

Empathic listening ( personal noticing)

Unfreezing frozen emotions ( group noticing)

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Transcendent thinking ( personal creativity)

Achieving insightful consensus ( group creativity).

The four skills concern developing the individuals

capacity to notice and a groups capacity to

notice, and then the individuals ability to respond

creatively to what is noticed and a groups abilityto respond creatively in this way. These skills can

be described and guiding exercises created but

they can only really be developed through practice

in the presence of and under the guiding eye of

one who knows. They are incorporated into

Quaker business practice in four steps which in

turn operationalise the four skills.

Recognising a concern

Operationalising a sense of search

Achieving a sense of completion

Recording and confirming the outcome

Sustaining intent

These four skills, operationalised in these four

steps, are the essence of the art of husbandry, and

the guidance for that husbandry can be sum-

marised as the three Ps already mentioned, that

when things are done aright:

The process grows the people who do it

The product grows the people who receive it

The profit grows the community

These three Ps form the linking elements around

work which link the medium-term contribution of

professional thought to the short-term contribu-

tion of active craftsmanship doing the right

thing and doing it right. These are both held

together under the long-term umbrella of intent,

which is what husbandry is about (Figure 1). It is

this development of the art of husbandry atEuropean level which is the intent of the ESTIEM

Summer Academy, to develop as reflective practi-

tioners the leaders of the future so that work

should have meaning.

References

Fox, G. 1975. Journal of George Fox. London:

Religious Society of Friends.

Hagan, E.E. 1961. How economic growth begins: astudy in the theory of social change. Cambridge,

Mass: MIT.

McClelland, D.C. 1961. The Achieving Society. Prin-

ceton: Van Nostrand.

Penn, W. 1985. Some Fruits of Solitude. USA: Friends

United Press.

Platts, M.J. 2003. Meaningful Manufacturing. York:

Sessions.

Sennett, R. 1998. The Corrosion of Character. New

York: Norton.

Watson, G. 1988. The Civils. London: Thomas

Telford.

Long term

HUSBANDRY

(intent)

WORK

process

pr

ofit

(actio

n)

CR

AFT

SMANSH

IP

Sh

ort

term

prod

uct

(though

t)

PROFESSIO

NALITY

Medium

term

Figure 1. The art of husbandry

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