The surprising truth about what motivates us

The below attached RAS Animate was forwarded to us from a business consultant we use periodicaly to get us out of trouble and get us focused again. I believe and agree with the findings of the lecture. The video talks about what motivates and list 3 factors that lead to better performace & personal satisfaction....

• Autonomy, the desire to be self directed
• Mastery, the urge to get better at stuff
• Purpose, Transcendent place to come to work

The video explains it so no sense going through it again here. I would like to think Industrial Revolution is leaning towards these factors however I know it is not there by a long way. Will ask the guys on the floor tomorrow to get some feed back to see where we are. Will update on the weekend coming.

The Surprising Truth about what motivates, from Dan Pink;s talk a the RSA


September 18, 2011 UPDATE TO ORIGNIAL POST


I sent the video to the employees of Industrial Revolution Ltd and the feedback was interesting. Everyone agreed with Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. They noted they have more of this in a small company like Ind Rev compared to large company like Toyota. Most if not all the guys have worked for companies where you have no autonomy, no purpose, and no incentive for Mastery. They are companies run with an iron fist, dictatorship leadership.

Some of the guys noted the presenter talks fast and draws even faster. For the older guys I don't think they understand the amount of time and editing it would have taken to make that video. However it is very well done.

When it came to the idea of having a 24 hr. period to do anything you wanted, it became evident some restriction would have to be put in place. Everyone said they do not know what they would do. I suspect in the example given in the video people may not have known either until the 24 period started, or more likely if you had more time to think in advance you may be better prepared. After a while talking about it at the shop, when joking around about it, some of the suggestions if they had 24 hrs totally free to do anything;

• Load up all the steel, cooper and aluminum they can and take it to a scrap yard.
• This could be good, and we do ship out a large bin of steel about every 2 months of scrap. However the intent was to take pretty much everything and get some money for it.
•  Make a go cart.
• The idea behind this is some of the guys see the many different parts and projects we get into and they are pretty sure I have enough junk around to make a few go carts.
• Just go to sleep and rest.

So the next step is to set some boundaries, If you are going to use shop supplies a budget of $100 can be spent for the first go round of the free days. I suspect it will take a few of these days before things really get going and running well.

Some of the examples I thought of;

• Organizing tools and repairing tool boxes and work stations to the way the individual likes to work (more self-directed).
• Work on welding skills and play around with the settings of the machine to learn and feel even more confident (mastery).
• Reposition lights or add more lights to make work stations better and more suited to the individual.

Bring Art and Science Back Together

In the UK, Guardian paper, there is an article “Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system”. Schmidt criticizes division between science and arts and says UK 'should look back to glory days of Victorian era.


When it comes to poetry and the literary arts I am not very well versed. However growing up my family was very artistic. My one uncle taught me the piano for a while, another uncle taught me how to carve and dream and to appreciate the CBC, an aunt that attempted to teach me how to write properly and make it look good (which I failed at miserably), an aunt that taught me how to figure skate till I was in grade 8 and my father a farmer and a canoe builder which requires a huge amount wood working talent and artistic ability. When I went to school, my course load was always math and science, very little of the arts except mandatory subjects. I did however have an artistic home life.

When I think about it, the majority of engineers I know that are very good do have a creative / artistic side to them. Some of the smartest number crunching engineers I have ever met have been from the former east block Europe countries. They could crunch numbers and analyze things, however I found once they figured out something was not strong enough or had a problem, they could not figure out how to redesign and solve the problem. I believe their education system pushed them very hard academically to be great math and science brains; however the art / design side was missing. So I think maybe the artical is partially correct, but I would say there are good engineers that cannot design and there are good artistic people that can design but cannot engineer. I propose that someone with both engineering and an artistic side is what I would call an inventor. You do not hear about people being called inventors anymore. I consider myself an inventor, it is the best way to describe what we do at Industrial Revolution to win orders. We invent ways to manufacture product for our customers.

Some of the passages of interest from the article are pasted below:

“You need to bring art and science back together."

"It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges," he said. "Lewis Carroll didn't just write one of the classic fairytales of all time. He was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford. James Clerk Maxwell was described by Einstein as among the best physicists since Newton – but was also a published poet."


Schmidt's comments echoed sentiments expressed by Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, who revealed he was stepping down this week. "The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians – who also happened to be excellent computer scientists," Jobs once told the New York Times.

Adding George Monbiot to Links

I originally referenced George Monbiot's web page because of his views and insights on nuclear and fossil fuels after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A few posts below this is where you will find it.

Since I posted the info I have been following his site and below are two more subjects he has written about that I have found very amusing. I find his debates and articles refreshing, he takes a stand on subjects. He is passionate about his subjects, but logical and reasonable. 

A Bounty for Blair's Arrest, be sure to following the link in his posting to the web site he started.

The Nuclear Power Debate, you can link to the actual debate, this is not really a good debate as the green piece fellow and other consultant debating against the motion never really talked about the motion but about their own agenda, however it was still very insightful. Interesting how the subject of Bombardier losing a huge train order to Siemens came up. It is also interesting that in England they offer the same strange subsides to solar power as we do here in Ontario, which is ludicrous.

Action for Happiness

A few months ago I had a post about the "The Movement For Happiness". I just want to make a note that the name has changed to "Action for Happiness". I have updated the link to the site also.

As per the post for the movement for happiness I still believe very much that Ayn Rand's philosophy does not conflict in any way with this movement for happiness. Even though she has conservative views about the economy everything I have read revolves around the pursuit of happiness.

Plasma Cutting Bolt Holes

Back in August 2010 we obtained a contract to make transfromer core clamps for a company near us. It originally started out to be 5 clamp sets per day which consists of 4 angles of various sizes averaging 16" in length with an average of 6 holes / slots and tapped holes put into them. It was to double in size over a few months. In the 2 months it went to an average of 30 clamp systems or 120 parts, 7 days a week from 5 days a week. We where using the CNC plasma to cut all the slots and holes and used the mill for the tapped holes.

In the two months we produced over 7000 angle parts, which corelates to 42,000 holes . The accuracy of the plasma is dependant on how long you alow the tips to run before changing. For cutting holes in wall thickness from 1/8" to 1/2" thick and hole diamters from 1/4" to 1" we can hold +- 0.035" diameter easily and location +-0.008 with ease. We did however have to give up the order as the customer required a tolerance that was tighter than this for the hole diameter.

We believe the project has been a success even though we did loose the order. It has given us a very strong base line for future quotes and has opened up the range of possiblities for new customers. If you happen to a product line that requires parts to be bolted together and the tolerances given above are acceptable which we believe they are for most structural work, then plasma cutting is without doubt the most cost effective way to do it.

We set up custom jigs to load and unload the CNC plasma table with angle, channel, beams etc from which we procede to cut the holes and parts required.

Going Critical, Nuclear Power / Coal

Going Critical ---follow this link, it is good!

The above link "Going Critical" will take you to George Monbiot's web site. I recommend you read it. He has recently been on CBC radio and I liked his argument for Nuclear Power and agree with it also. He notes that more radiation is given off from coal production which is true and also notes that even an old bad designed nuclear site in Japan gets hit with one of the world’s largest earthquakes and one of the world’s largest Tsunami ever, yes there are issue, however compared to fossil fuels it is not anywhere close to being as deadly.

I have recently been doing work for coal mines and I have within the last year or so done some indirect work for the nuclear industry. For the coal mines we help with transfer chutes and other areas, for the nuclear industry we have done some structural and lifting device engineering related to the fuel cell production.

I also recommend you go back and read some of his other articals. Again agree with all I have seen so far. "Atomised" is also a good read.

Smart about 3D, lets use it

When we design parts and assemblies using any 3D program the greatest benefit of this is we have already built the unit in the computer at least once before it goes to the floor.

When designing using 3D we make parts and assemble them just like you would in the real world. During the design phase designers find errors that would not normally be found when just looking at 2D drawings. We then modify the parts and assemblies to insure everything fits properly and is located in the correct location. Talk to any designer using 3D modeling and I am sure they will agree with this. The same thing happens if you are working on the shop floor building something from scratch (in the 3d world). You will put a series of parts together and then during final assembly you will often find that a part of two does not fit as you thought and you will modify on the fly to make it work. The exact same thing happens when designing in 3D, however it is typically a lot less expensive to modify a part on the computer than it is in the real world. This is the greatest reason for using the 3D modeling. You have already built a virtual part on the computer even before it gets to the floor.

It was about 15 years ago Industrial Revolution started using Pro/Eng for our designs. Before that everything was done in AutoCAD. What we found was the errors on the shop floor from mistakes on the drawings dropped by over 70% within a few weeks of switching to Pro/Eng. We switched to Pro/ENG not for this reason, but because many of our customers where using it and we wanted to match with them seamlessly. The previously unforeseen benefit of reduced rework however was huge even for a small shop like us.

We would like to see anyone using 3D modeling to please supply the part and general assembly drawings in a dxf format so we can use the data direct from your own files. What I do so often is redraw the locations of  tabs and parts for that have already been modeled. We often etch the layout direct to the metal parts. We are trying to eliminate the layout time for each part we are manufacturing and to increase the accuracy. However mistakes are still made sometimes if I am only copying from a 2D drawing to make another 2D drawing for etching. It seems to me to be a huge waste of time and a shame that we cannot use the data that is already available and correct. The benefits that are gained from doing the 3D modeling are being lost, or at least not utilized to the fullest.

I am passionate about this because manufacturing in North America is falling behind the rest of the world very fast. It is not just the fault of manufacturing but also government hindrance, but that is another story. We have the tools being used already to manufacture even better and to attempt to keep the price down.

Only those companies that are using their tools and skills to the maximum benefit will survive in the global market.