COE

"...empirical studies of on-the-job excellence have clearly and repeatedly established that emotional competencies—communication, interpersonal skills, self-control, and so on—‘play a far larger role in superior job performance than do cognitive abilities and technical expertise'. Yet most of the emphasis in the education and training of engineers is placed upon purely technical education."

Professor W. J. King wrote "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" in 1944, as three articles that appeared in "Mechanical Engineering." It was later published as a booklet by ASME, and was re-released with revisions and additions by James G. Skakoon a few months ago. The above quote, with its embedded remark from Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence," sums up the booklet's thesis.

Perhaps the reason that the "emotional competencies" are not touched upon in engineering education is that the educational system's expectation was that these would be developed before the student reached the point of specialization in engineering—either in the family, or in early education, which was at one time within the fold of the family. Good medieval education began with the Trivium—grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. (See The Lost Tools of Learning, by Dorothy Sayers, http://www.joelorr.com/educatio.htm#losttools.) Only after mastering the basics of logic and proper and civil discourse did the student proceed to "subjects"—the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.

"All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," declares the title of Robert Fulghum's charming 1993 best-seller. But the very popularity of that book is a sad reflection on the fall from popularity of a more fundamental institution.

Mr. Fulghum, why couldn't you write, "All I really need to know I learned in my family"? He isn't here to answer, so I will speculate: Perhaps because the generally accepted image of the family is dysfunctional. So whatever you may have learned there, you had to discard it to get along in society—the model for which is kindergarten.

I say the family has fallen from popularity, rather than deteriorated, because the family—as model, metaphor, and practice—is actually intact. It is only the media view of the family that is broken.

The incredible affluence that the American way of life has made possible seems to have brought about a kind of adolescence in the structuring of business. Like a teenager who decides that all his problems are the fault of his parents and their way of life, and leaves home to seek anything different at all, the people who think about the structuring of businesses have explored almost every variety of group relationship save that of the family.

I find it mysterious that organizations have long been groping around for ways in which to structure themselves. They look to a wide variety of models and metaphors for help. In "The Invisible Powers," by John J. Clancy, there is a fascinating list: the journey; the game; war; the machine; the organism; society itself. Yet even this excellent exposition gives short shrift the most natural of models: the family.

An interesting direction for research, far beyond the scope of this brief essay, is the subject of the disparity between the actuality of family life and the media's portrayal of it. The fact of this disparity is indisputable, and easy to verify. Among the layers of possible explanation, the least controversial is that the people who feel the greatest need to analyze and comment on such subjects are precisely the products of dysfunctional families; so their views are disproportionately represented.

But whatever the reason, the "family plan" is not been seriously considered as a form of business organization in current or recent research.

I believe this is a mistake.

If the lines in the diagram that describe a person's hierarchy of commitments and relationships do not cross one another, they generally have a good idea of how to resolve conflicts in their lives. But since most businesses are organized along unnatural lines, they place demands on employees that perforce conflict with other commitments. So the employee—say, the engineering professional—is in a constant state of stress.

No amount of motivational pep-talk can alter the structural conflict. It is not simply a matter of attitude; the individual is always in the midst of irreconcilable differences, and is thus always living in a state of compromise—providing minimal satisfaction to all interests, and to them. (I'm writing a book called The Excellence Principle: Organismic Management that addresses the family kind of business structure.)

So what can an engineering professional—a CATIA operator, a designer, a supervisor—do? The simplest action you can take is simply to rethink your personal relationships at home and at work in family terms. To whom are your most important commitments? I suggest the following order: God, yourself, your spouse, your kids, your boss, your company's customers, your work colleagues, your home community, your other relatives, your country. Alter to suit your needs, but think "family."

Within a family, we have a sense of relative importance; usually, a sibling is more than an uncle, aunt, or cousin, and so on.

If you begin to consider your life as a whole, rather than compartmentalized into "work" and "home," you will be on your way to greater integrity and wholeness. Think about it. Then do something.

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