Work Design: Enspiral: Much spin spiralling out of self-control, but some very good points worthy of being reworked

This Vimeo video shoud be appreciated, analyzed and taken with more than one grain of salt.  It doesn't address the needs of, nor the Christian address to, the 99% of the world's poor — who want jobs, are willing to labour, and require organization by companies with capital to hire them and engage them in production of goods and services.

Rather, it's addressed to 1% of the middle-class, to children of that middle-class, who are attracted to work of particular kinds — especially computing and designing (print and digital, especially digital IT programming) who come to the need to earn a living with the baggage of horizons formed by privilege — certainly in the expectation that (some) people will want to work two days a week, "people who want to work for change"

"Democracy, networks, and collaboration" — the soft even tone of voice, borrowed from invidious gurus -- the surest sign of a master manipulator — "autonomy" — "self-control" — "optimizing happiness" -- "we just try to take away the pain of running your own business"  Time (cleaving the week into 3 segments):  2 days of "client work,"  three of "change work," and 2 days of "Reading and Research."  What I like least about the presentation, other than the phoney guru tone of voice, is the lack of giving credit where credit is due, as few if any of the ideas bundled and packaged here have no history.  The impression is that everything suggested here is brand-new, but even the three segments offered mere distribute Karl Marx's utopian scenario of how "after the Revolution" we will be able to function, not by the segmented week, but by the segmented day.  Of course, what Communism produced in the way of work conditions never attained the lustre of the Marxian pipe-dream.  But, more largely, I want to emphasize that other people came up with the bookshelf of ideas on display, and in this case a little name dropping of these ideational forebears woud be appreciated.  I don't begruge this idealized version of what it coud be like for some people in their multi-dimensionally active lives and income earning.  But, neither do I begrudge the Mercedes (or was it Ferraris) to those who have set that kind of ownership as a life-goal or symbollically valuable (for them) of "the good life."  I don't evny the rich, but as the Enspiral video suggests there are other ways of disposing of one's time and labours — the Enspiral model is one among many, and it doesn't require the guru vocal piety for its own validation.
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Vimeo (January27,2k11)
Thanks and Hat Tip to Steve Bishop The Daily Reformational
— video reposted here by OwlbFollow @Owlb
general editor, refWrite page 3 (Special Features)
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Perhaps a key point I am trying to make here is simply that some other people, lots of them, find the "traditional" type of work under a boss, often with professional managers and often with owners and investors, okay.  Many industrial workers in the Western economies actually enjoy their job, and some really appreciate being represented by a labour union that situates union stewards on the shop floor.

The scholarly work I woud juxtapose to the Enspiral guru's voice is a traditional book by Maarten J. Verkerk, Trust and Power on the Shop Floor:  An ethnographical, ethical, and philosophical study on responsible behaviour in industrial organizations (2004).  It doesn't even concern itself with the issue of labour representation and a plurality of unions chosen by different workers on the same shop floor — which has become a long term philosophical and practical concern of my own.  What Verkerk dwells on is the formation of work-community becawz people, even in these workaday milieux, want to do a good job and obtain satisfaction from it.  Large industrial organizations (businesses, corporations, both privately owned and stock-sharing with investors ... yes, for a profit) can be operated with wisdom and the benefits of science of groups and organizations that take up a good measure of a labouring person's time, time out of one's life if it is experienced negatively, time for one's life also at work if one experience's one work positively.  It's not all as obvious as Enspiral soaps out — with its own business ideology, borrowed but unacknowledged ideas, and lack of industrial experience.

Verkerk traces thru the history of Western business in the industrial mode, picking out the key moments of truth in the ideas of theorists and practitioners actual engaged in or close to the actual work process.  He goes as thoroly into the contributions of Big Business practioners who wrote books in the West and Japan, helping managers who want to change the world and their own work close to the shop floor.  It's a much better problem than those posed by Enspiral, which too has its moment of truth.  The difficulty is to isolate them conceptually, appreciate them for those valuable moments, and critique them as another self-contained ideology that lacks universality, which indeed is a truth to which the envideod Enspiral spokesman seems to turn only his blind eye.  We all have blindspots, and some of us actually put on blinders with glee.

— Owlb


Introduction to Enspiral from Enspiral on Vimeo.

A photo from Chile, one of those entombed in a mine not so long ago, one who re-emerged, praising God ....

CLA-USA  CLAC CNV

A photo by a Brazilian photo-artisit (sorry, I lost track of his name) featuring a worker with either a packcheque or a lottery-win cheque.

Found it on a site recommended by a digi-friend there (sorry again, I lost track of the documentation).

Thanks! and Hat Tip!