Work

Well I just uploaded a brand new spanking theme and now I’m going to celebrate it with a little bit of blogging. Truth be told, I really neglected this site for a while while I did a lot of other things including getting Simply Cooking With Sue and continuing to work on FilmmakerIQ. Although I’ve been crazy busy, it’s always good to keep a bit of the blog going just to practice a little writing and to get out some thoughts out there.

So in celebration of a brand new look and site, I thought I would start out by writing a little something about the Human Element.

DOW Chemical’s had an advertising campaign talking about the importance of the human element – that rather predictable yet amazing thing that can make or break projects. It’s a nice campaign although the cynic inside me questions whether a corporation like DOW really believes that. I’ve worked with and seen companies that treated people like cogs in a machine – taking that Ford assembly line approach to modern business.

It just don’t work.

And quite frankly I myself was taking that viewpoint toward my work and the musical groups I play with. I seem to be under the impression that any person, so long as they claimed to wear a certain hat, could fit into the role and perform as expected.

I know it sounds stupid as I type this out, but the truth of the matter is I simply didn’t value the “human element” as much as I should.

Going back to my days at Der Greenestag… they had a nasty practice of “hiring” interns to perform a lot of crucial functions. Interns would always be in and out working on different events. And when it came down to the actual event date and there was a problem, the first question always was, “Where’s that intern, it’s his job to do XYZ”.

Cogs – non-individual workers who aren’t given responsibility nor any expectation of success. Just another nameless and faceless person to perform a repetitive and mundane task.

DMV workers essentially.

But that’s certainly not what a modern business needs. A creative endeavor, like what I’m trying to do, needs that human element.

The fact of the matter is: One person is not the same as another. Each person brings a whole host of plus and minus to the game. And if you start taking the attitude of having “interchangeable personnel” – well then the whole thing is going down in smoke.

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