Tag: empathy

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I’m an engineer, I feel your pain and I have a plan

This little refrain is my version of Aristotle’s three artistic truths for making a convincing argument. Aristotle proposed three things were needed to win people over. The first is ethos – or trustworthiness. Is this person someone I trust. The second is pathos – or empathy. Does this person have a shared sense of pain. And the third is logos – or logic. In other words, what’s the plan. 

As engineers we often start with the plan. But the plan won’t work without trust and empathy. Hence the refrain. Showing up as a professional can build trust. Feeling the pain might be the hardest part, because it has to be genuine. Then, we get to the plan, which is probably the part we started off with.

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Machine work

Inputs

Outputs

KPIs

Tools

Models

Performance

Quantitative analysis

Scaling up

Accelerator

Dashboard

Timesheet

Human resources 

Bottom line 

When we think of our work as the work of a machine, then is it any surprise that the incredible machines that we have built will one day starting doing it for us.

But we do ourselves a disservice if we only think of ourselves in machine terms. If we leave out empathy, care, collective knowledge, grounded understanding of place, knowing that is not describable in words, trust, passion, play… then we are not bringing our whole selves to the work we need to do. 

There are so many more ways of knowing than the knowledge we can enter into a computer. Let the computers do the computational part – they will be very good at it – and let us step into our wider intelligence as engineers (and other humans).

This blog post was inspired by Reinventing Organizations, by Frederic Laloux. 

This post originally appeared on eiffelover.com in September 2024.

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In the interests of health and safety…

That’s how the sign started its instruction. But health and safety is not a person. It has no interests.

But people do. 

They have interests. They are interested in staying healthy and safe. 

And we are interested in them, because we are empathetic. We want other people to stay healthy and safe.

So why not start with “to help you stay healthy and safe…”?

Or, warmer still, “because we care about you.”

(Or even, because we love you, as fellow human beings?)

What “in the interests of health and safety” really signals is “in the interests of us having discharged our responsibility to tell you’. Which is empty of empathy. 

And love.