James L Adams—People and Products

Working With the Hands

Time for a break from shortcomings we homo demi sapiens have from changes that occur more rapidly than we evolve. I am sure that you realize that I am not opposed to thinking short term, power, and order.   All of the post Neolithic styles of thinking are still necessary.  They are just no longer adequate, as can be seen from following what is going on in the news (liberal and/or conservative..   I will return  to the topic from time to time.

As you may know from past blogs,  or knowing me, I am a commited fan of working with the hands.  I not only get great pleasure from this, but the house benefits,  I can make furniture and yard art for my wife (and myself), I can collect friends who recognize the same need,  and finally  I can keep from going nuts.  There are many arguments for this.  I have gone over a few in past posts, but suffice it to say that our hands are wonderful and the reason we humans have survived this long.

As you may also know, my favorite hobby is rescuing antique machinery from the furnaces.   My present project is perhaps the most difficult one I have picked on, but important because it has a history.  It is a 1957 Peterbilt truck.  A photo of it being driven by my son probably 40 years ago is below:

The truck belonged to my friend, Marc Faye, who I met in the Air Force, and who  when his tour was up,  took over the family farm on whose property I built a barn (with my hands, aided by quite a few power tools) to serve as a base for some of my machines. My older son, Bob, although he has worked as a musician,  a product designer, a consultant in several areas,and a teacher, has farming in his blood.  He became a friend of Marc’s son when too young to get a commercial license, but would spend his summers  working on the farm,  beginning with kid jobs (following the nut shaker and picking up  the nuts that did not get caught in the shaker), and working his way up through driving tractors and harvesters to getting his license to drive  highway trucks.  This was a big deal.  I road with him a few times when he was pulling 80 tons of fruit up to a dryer in a town north of their farm, and he clearly loved the work (and the truck).  In a sense, driving large trucks is the  ultimate  blue  collar job, and Bob has always loved big machinery, and has always loved blue collar work, although he is highly qualified for white

The truck saw lots of service and finally was replaced with a new  one, but during its life  received a lot of banging around and was repaired and “improved” by many people, including many people who were not professional at doing such things.  On my 60^th birthday, I heard the horn of an obviously large truck in my driveway,and there was Bob with  the truck. He had acquired  the truck  and was giving it to me as a birthday present. I was thrilled.

It had been shined up before it  was given to me, but restoring it was clearly going to be a major job, and I have lived  all my life with a surplus of things I wanted to do, so I built it a lean – to on my garage and I am ashamed to say left the truck sit for 25 years, which did not help it’s health any, but it has amused and attracted a lot of people,  It is now on the operating table and with the help of a friend I have torn into it and we are putting it back together. We are approaching the job from the inside out. A few before and after photos below give an indication of where we are, and what we have to do.  I am shooting for next summer.

Radiator housing restored.  Rest of exterior not.

Before

Door before restoration

Top before restoration

Another shot at unrestored ceiling

Wiring under dash before restoration

Rewired and dashboard restored

New interior complete

Lots left to keep me off of the streets!

Power and Leadership

In my fantasies, I sometimes think of a single world, in which all nations , beliefs, and other large groups would cooperate to the benefit of all.  Unfortunately, this is probably  not going to happen in my life time, or the near future, without the threat of major damage to the human race (wreckage from climate change, massive over population, nuclear warfare, wide spread starvation or  plague, potential impact with another extra terrestrial body, attack  by the as yet unknown population of another planet, etc.). Hopefully it will not happen.

So we will continue to live in tribes, although they will be huge ones, not sharing the same beliefs and customs, and not restricted to a single plot of land. We will continue to need/want power and leadership for two reasons: they assure stability and the necessary collaboration to accomplish great things (if we cooperate), and it feels good to have power and we like both to lead and be lead (assuming we respect and admire the leader).

It would take a great deal of creativity to reach my fantasy world, and universal agreement and willingness to have, agree upon, and happily live within the agreed upon rules.  But it has happened in small countries (Singapore) and temporarily in large ones (The U.S., Britain, and France after World War II). There is a good bit of this in the Scandinavian countries, Australia and New Zealand,  and many other countries, usually smaller ones. But in the world  in general  there is widespread  discontent, much of it focused on leaders and their use of power.

In  my perfect world, there would be a perfect leader (which I don’ t think exists, although  Churchill  seemed to be pretty good in World War II, and Mandela seemed to  be  pretty good in South Africa). She/he would be likable,without strong political biases, and a combination wise person, model for the rest of us and firm final word. He/she would be rewarded by doing their job  well, and managing and rewarding the people who reported to them (rewards in the form of satisfaction in successfully doing an appreciated and valuable job). Using the U.S. as a potential model, this  leader (president) would  also manage the vice president, and the heads of the cabinet bureaus who would  do top level planning and policy. They would not always agree with the president, and would  represent points of view of diverse groups of people in the country. The president should be smart, but not think he/she has all the answers.

Cabinet leaders would be professionals, in that they would  have spent a number of years in the area of responsibility of the bureaus they headed.,  As an example, I agree that the Secretary of Defense should be a civilian, but I think it also preferable that he/she have spent a number of years on active duty in the military, and hopefully been exposed to combat. These would be the people  in charge of  developing policy and strategy, with the help of the people reporting to them, who would  in turn have experience in the area they were working in and not always agree with their boss or the President or Vice President.

Obviously I am looking for creativity here. The bureau heads should be creative and  in turn encourage  creativity among their people.  I think that we are going to be looking at a good bit of change in the next 50 or 100 years, and time tested approaches to solving problems will no longer work.  It will be a period requiring experimenting, open minds,  willingness to learn new information and approaches, and yes—creativity at all levels, reviewed by all involved, 

This is a dream, of course, of a government for which I would love to work.  But long term survival can not be built on the past, and a single person (president), cannot be expected to come up with solutions to the increasingly complex and multi disciplinary problems that will exist, and in fact already are here.

I think the above description of a hierarchy applies in any field involving a large population of humans,  If you would  like more of my thoughts on individual, group and organizational creativity, read my Conceptual Blockbusting book, and think about how it might apply to the leaders of your country or the Catholic church.

 

 

Homo Demi Sapiens —An Animal in Denial

.I am happy to be an animal.  It seems to be more fun than being either a plant or a mineral. 

Of course, I am biased being an animal, and being equipped with the ability to believe that I as an animal, especially a human animal, outrank other animals.  In fact, we humans  have officially designated ourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens (wise, wise humans) That perhaps remains to be seen..  Dinosaurs ruled the roost for  about  130 million years. Termites have been around for 250 million years  We split off from the primate tree 6 million years ago, but  we lived as hunter gatherers until the Neolithic Revolution, which occurred about 15,000 years ago — a mere instant in geological time.  It is supposedly a good thing to be part of a species that is around for a  long time.  How long are we going to last?  Certainly not forever unless we change the way we act and get more honest about how smart we are.  We are smarter  than other forms of life, but not nearly as smart as we think we are.  Hence I prefer to think of us as Homo Demi Sapiens (Half Wise Humans)

We need to  think a bit more about our place in the grand pageant which is the planet Earth, and use our relatively powerful  ability to be creative to get more serious about  attacking some of the major problems involving large numbers of people (all of us?)— such things as exploding population and urbanization, rapid change in technology,  obsolete forms of government, climate change, and so on.  From the messages I get from residents of a broad selection of countries, these problems are large  and many.

W e need to use our creative ability  to better  think our way through such problems. I have studied creativity  since I was in college 65 years ago, but focussed on individuals, groups,  and such larger collections of people as companies,  universities, and non-profit organizations. Increasing the creativity of nations, religions, and cultures requires more than shows up in  books on how to manage creativity such as mine.  The conceptual blocks are more difficult to handle, as they have evolved over large spans of time, and evolution  is  slow, so many of them must be fought by intellectual effort.  I  gave you an example  of one ( short term thinking} in my last post, when I brought up our  reluctance to tackle problems that sneak up  on us and take a long time to solve (if ever).

Let me list a few more here. I will repeat our reluctance to tackle what I call long term problems. I  will throw in short term thinking again, since I think it is of major importanc, and follow each with a one line explanation about what was good about them before  the Neolithic revolution when we stopped being hunter gatherers, ,  and what may be troublesome about them now. I will continue  to touch upon them from time to time in this blog. I don’t want go deeply into all of them in this post, because  that would be a book, not  a blog, and I  am writing a book on such things and attempting to not become depressed. Feel free to add “blocks” and argue with my list.  There are more, of course,  so feel free to argue with mine and add your own.

 

1. We focus on the short term

Good then - Food and shelter for today and tomorrow

Bad now -complex problems such as carbon emissions, medical care, poverty 

2. We like power, and order

Good then - Following strong leaders, and becoming one

Can be bad now - Dictators, governments making more rules and laws than necessary, less freedom

3. We are selfish and competitive

Good then - More food in times of scarcity ,motivation

Bad now - Endless desire for growth and wealth, GNP fixation 

4. We want others to think like we do in large numbers

Good then - Reinforcement, social agreement

Bad now- Fights between Christians and Muslims, capitalists and socialists, liberals and conservatives

5. We are drawn to small tribes

Good then  - Strength, Identity, Sharing of values

Can be bad now - Hell’s Angels, Tea Party members, youth gangs, Ku Klux Clan

6. We resist change

Good then- Strong tradition and building of expertise, tradition, stable societies

Bad now – Resistance to getting rid  of nukes, preparing for cimate change, opposition to vaccinating children, retention of outmoded ethnic and cultural biases.

7. We rely too heavily on science and technology breakthroughs

Okay then - Not much science and yechnology

Bad now – reliance  totally on atmospheric engineering to stop global warming, driverless cars to solve traffic problems, etc in the future

8. We depend on faiths—religion,science, our political party,— to find answers to our problems

            Good then - We didn’t have to think about difficult problems

Bad now – Time to think more deeply about difficult problems,such as health cae.

9. We want simple answers, even to complicated problems

Good then  - We could rapidly implement the answer

Bad now - There are no simple answers to many (most important) problems

10. We ignore expertise if we do not like what it says

Good then - We might discover a better way to do things

Bad Now – Leaders ignoring opinions of people who have spent their lives seeking better understanding  (scientists, economists, psychologists, etc)

11. We have a limited feeling for big/small quantities— light years, national debts, nanometers—but throw them around anyway

Okay Then - Big/small quantities not as common in life

Bad now -We fool ourselves constantly

12. We depend on increasingly complicated and fragile systems

Okay then - Systems weren’t that complicated then

Bad Now – Failing systems  have high costs – Boeing Max

13. We take our environment and other resources for granted —open space, clean air

Okay then - Low population – no apparent problem

Bad Now - An increasingly critical problem, since we continue to place it low in our priorities

14. We kill each other with little improvement of our lives or species —war

Okay then - Casualties low and expected, economic cost low

Not okay now -Costs high, wars seem to no longer resolve issues in the long term , and we have weaponry capable of sending ourselves back to before the Neolithic revolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me and my Blog

As you may have noticed, I have changed the banner on this blog to include five books I have written. I began this blog when I had completed my Good Products, Bad Products book (briefly described on the left), and was teaching a class with the same name in the Stanford Engineering School.  with a good friend named Dave Beach. It focused on products of industry and important characteristics of quality that could not be quantified. If you look at my posts, especially in the early days of the blog, you will see lots of material on this topic.

My interests on quality had always gone beyond industrial products, and the last few posts I wrote and my return to creativity and innovation are an indication of that. I still have constant gripes about the products of industry, mostly resulting from industry's short term desire to make money.  I am in the middle of one right now, based on the software in my Mac computer. When I began working on my book a couple of years ago, I resolved  not to upgrade  my  operating system or various programs until I was done, because I wanted to focus on the writing.  But of course I could not get away with that.  My many editors did upgrade, which resulted in my having to learn different tricks in layout, track changes, and such things, upgrade Photoshop, etc.  Now that I am finished I have upgraded the operating system and seem to bump into continuous pesky little changes that reflect ideas software people had that seemed to them to increase the usefulness of the computer.  Phooey.  Computers are tools, like pianos or airplane controls. Once you learn how to use them, you don’t want to come up against minor changes.

But improving quality, whether it concerns can openers or the overall quality of life, depends on creativity and innovation.  And many problems these days involve very large numbers of people.  Evidence  is in your newspapers, and has to do with complex problems such as medical care, war, climate change, traffic, housing,  education, and so on. I have theories about why such problems are becoming so obvious, and I mention this in my last few posts.   They have to do with increasing populations, major changes in technology, and the relative slowness of evolution (which I believe in absolutely).  I have given talks on this and am writing a book with has the working title of Homo Demi Sapiens (half wise humans). I agree that we are the smartest form of life so far (assuming we define what “smart” means, but do not think that we are as smart as we think we are.  We are equipped with habits of many years ago when life was simpler, and not equipped well to  solve many contemporary  problems when it comes to change,  even though we are responsible for much of this change.  We have major blocks.

As an example, we respond to complex problems very slowly and underestimate the time, effort, and expense of solving them. Think of medical care, a properly demanded service these days involving a wide variety and large numbers of people on the care side, even more various and numbers of care seekers, and a relatively small number of people in the government that have practiced medicine or been seriously  ill.  We are now coming up on an election, in which few candidates or their advisers are actively involved in medical care. As you know, we have had a medical program entitled  Affordable Medical Care (Obama Care) for ten years.  It seems to be working, with some problems that can be diminished over time.  But two years ago, Trump was elected, vowing to stop Obama Care and put in place a Terrific Health Program (Trump Care?  For which he gave no details).  Now, as a comparison, we seem to have a high regard for the intelligence  of the British, and they have a health care program called the National Health Service.  It was put into place in 1948, over 70 years ago, and they are still working on improving it.

We seem to be wired to think in the short term.  That probably worked 30,000 years ago when we hunted and gathered in small tribes.  It does not work now.   It is a huge conceptual block in our solving major problems.  If  we wipe out species with our large numbers (including ourselves) they will not come back.  If we pollute our environment beyond a certain point, that species may be us.  Our kids are not going to solve these large problems, because they too will be  thinking in the short term (their life span)

As a rather amusing comment on this short term view,  I was working at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, When John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. was  going to put a person on the moon in ten years.  JPL had  been traditionally occupied with rocket and jet propulsion for the army and was instantly made part of NASA  (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and told to perform a number of unmanned/womanned spacecraft missions leaning toward getting human passengers there and back.

This was an amazing challenge for the newly named NASA. No one was even sure of the exact location of the moon, much less how to control the temperature of a spacecraft, provide one  with power, control it over long distances, or build a system strong enough to people there and back and survive the necessary launch and landing. But it happened, partly boosted by the “Space Race” with Russia, partly by a nasty congressional investigation when the first six Ranger spacecraft failed in their  mission, and partially  because of amazing public interest in, and support of the mission

But one day,  early in the project, some of we then young engineers were talking  to a wise and elder engineer about how in the world the Aerospace business was going to accomplish this mission in such a short time,  He explained to us that it was an important and expensive project and if you wanted to get a lot of money from  congress, you should propose something heroic that members of congress could point to as a high point of their congressonal career.  There was wisdom there. Congress is probably a bit loath to commit large amounts of money for projects to be completed 50 years from now.

When  I am talking about such  things as global warming or polluted seas, people often tell me “let the kids worry about it”. A suicidal approach. We have to develop the skill  of pursuing large scale projects that outlive us as individuals and affect large groups of people—long term thinking about large populations.