When is LO inappropriate? LO13858

Bill Hendry (sfidba@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us)
Thu, 5 Jun 1997 13:58:22 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO13832 --

As someone who worked on an assembly line for a couple of years while
growing up in Detroit, I can speak for myself that bolting together 400+
engines per day, 6 days a week was definetely not anything approaching a
heightened state of awareness!!!!

Ed Lawler has some thought provoking material in "The Ultimate Advantage"
on when high involvement management practices, which I would include LO
in. for your perusal.

What in the world is an alpha state anyway?

On Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Ray Evans Harrell wrote:

> Doc,
>
> This is the last undoing of the old "hired hand" on the assembly line that
> Henry Ford instituted. Ford used Buddhist and Reincarnation metaphors for
> his workers. "Work" was to hire the hands, home was for the mind and
> family values. "Put in the time." Mike Hollinshead, my co-author on a
> book that we are researching and an economic historian has noted that the
> time spent on the assembly line may very well constitute an alpha brain
> meditative state of heightened awareness. An artist friend of mine, who
> was losing her eyes, used the job of "short order cook" to work with the
> issues of "letting go" of her work. She told me that at a certain point
> she also entered into a meditative flow where she had heightened awareness
> and attention but a calm, contentment and relaxation. If work for these
> people constitutes what is called a "Peak Experience" or "one's best
> experience of performance in terms of feelings of ease and mastery of
> execution, joy in working, confidence, loss of ego, and a sense of oneness
> with the job" which is what the Ford assembly line had, then you might
> have a problem that only the military educational solution would solve.

BH

-- 

Bill Hendry, Training and OD Specialist, Hillsborough County, FL work email: sfidba@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us | home bhendry@earthlink.net (813) 276-2727 work phone, (813) 276-2197 fax

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."

From "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

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