Here is the second section of a staff meeting based on If Aristotle Ran General Motors by Tom Morris.
IF ARISTOTLE RAN GENERAL MOTORS – BEAUTY
THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION AT WORK
Beauty on the job
·
How people feel about their workplace affects
their morale and in turn, their productivity.
If we think of offices as large, dull strictly utilitarian structures, we
fail to provide for the human spirit.
Brightening the human experience and enhancing the environment is
appropriate. The workplace should
express a certain joy and embody enthusiasm.
·
Does our office encourage openness and contact
with other people? Is it a warm,
friendly atmosphere, but a place where there is performance, where work gets
done in a warm and friendly way?
·
It has been found that the best work gets done
in a place where attention is paid to people’s needs for light, beauty and
comfort. When people love their working
environment, it inspires their enthusiasm and even a measure of joy. What can we do to enhance our environment?
·
Little things make a big difference. What little things can you do that will
enhance the office environment?
Aesthetic Surprise
·
Tom Morris taught philosophy at Notre Dame. He talks about playing the song, “Don’t
Worry, Be Happy” over the auditorium speakers before the first exam of the
year. A student told him that it changed
the atmosphere into something almost festive.
The students would take the test with smiles on their faces and feet
tapping in time to the music.
“Music
produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” ~Confucius~
·
After finding that the song did not result in
good grades one semester Tom realized he’d have to try something different
after some of his students found themselves confronted with the worst scores
they had ever encountered. When the next
test day came Tom started out playing “Caught in the Crossfire” by Stevie Ray
Vaughn. Then he waited with the test
papers in hand. Five seconds passed, and
then ten and the students began to wonder what was happening. Then the doors at the back of the auditorium
burst open and the Notre Dame marching band came in playing the Victory
March. The class was ecstatic and he
believes as a result of the aesthetic surprise scored higher than on the first
test. His reason for doing it- Why
should the band just play the victory march for the football team, why not in
the classroom where it really matters?
The point is, it made them feel special and appreciated. It made their workplace a place of enjoyment.
·
How can we bring a sense of festivity to our
workplace from time to time?
The Art of Work
·
The previous examples are of passive aesthetic
experience. Aesthetic experience can be
active as well as passive, in other words, performance art. There is beauty in solving a problem
elegantly, in providing acknowledged excellence of quality in service or
product. Is your work a dance? Is it a play?
Do you see your co-workers as fellow cast members? Every day you’re sculpting, sketching, and
quilting a pattern of interactions, of relationships, of solutions to
problems. A concern for beauty should
continually play an important role, along with a concern for truth, in how we
think about our jobs and in the many ways we interact with each other in our
work.
·
Think of all the roles each of us play in the
practice. Where can you see beauty in
what each person does? When does your
job feel great?
The Most Basic
Question
·
What is the meaning of life?
·
The meaning of life is creative love. Loving creativity. This is the proper meeting point of
philosophy, religion and business. Not
love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a
dynamic power moving out into the world and doing something original. It means the creative building of new
structures, new relationships, new solutions, and new possibilities for our
world that are rooted in love, a concern for the dignity and integrity and
values of others in this life. This is
the foundation on which any meaningful life must be built.
·
What are you building? Where is your art? What are you creating day to day? Is your life guided by creative love? In doing your work, are you somehow involved
in acts of loving creativity?
·
How do your co-workers envision their work? How can you help them experience their work
as having fundamental meaning in their lives?
The Beauty of Business
·
What is business?
·
All employees should be thought of as in
partnership with management, and all the people within a business should be
thought of as partners with both suppliers and customers, partners ultimately
for the common goal of living well.
Ideally those within a business should prosper and live better because
of the business, but so should others affected by its activities. What does that mean to you?
·
We should always be asking ourselves whether
what we contemplate doing will enhance or diminish this crucial function of the
business within our domain of influence.
Are we building partnerships for living well? Give examples of things that can enhance or
diminish the function of our dental practice.
·
So what then, is business? Business is the art of growth. Growth is the essence of life. Business is the art of life.
·
How have you grown in our dental practice? How do you help others grow?
The New Neighborhood At Work
·
The people we see at work each day, the people
around us whose thoughts and activities will be largely responsible for whether
we all experience business success together, are all people who come from
families and are all people who need friendship in their lives.
·
Discipline, comfort, a sense of belonging, a
feeling of connectedness…every human being needs these things.
·
Most people do not live near extended family
anymore and neighborhoods don’t hold the same sense of community that they used
to.
·
Contemporary businesses now have the opportunity
to create a new kind of workplace fulfillment and workplace loyalty by meeting
many of the deep human needs for love and appreciation, needs for respect and
forgiveness and nurture and support.
Teamwork, for example must be rooted in genuine respect and
understanding. Leadership must be
grounded in love and appreciation. These
are the genuinely human issues. And as long as human beings do the work, make
the deals, use the products, buy the services, and chart the future, these
should be the most important issues. Are
they the most important issues in our practice?
How?
·
People will not feel fulfilled in what they do,
and will not be experiencing that measure of personal happiness they are
capable of attaining on the job unless they are feeling that the aesthetic
dimension of their experience is being respected and nurtured by the people
around them and by the conditions of their work.
·
We should never forget that a concern for the
aesthetic is everybody’s business. The
beauty and artistry of the workplace is everybody’s business. Everyone should be a partner for living
well. Reinventing corporate spirit and
reestablishing a new foundation for sustainable excellence in modern practice
is everybody’s job.
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