Maintaining our focus on improvement

As 2017 winds to a close, we take a look back at one of the most tumultuous years in recent history.

By Bob Vavra, Content Manager, CFE Media December 20, 2017

In our final issue of 2014, I wrote the following passage:

“We have the choice of spending our time pondering at a past we can neither change nor control, or turning forward and facing our challenges with hope and confidence and resolve. We have the technology, the clear understanding of what we can achieve. We know the path to success. We’ve seen it work, and we are encouraged by others who also have made it work. We believe in ourselves, our people and our plan. It’s all right there in front of us. We cannot control everything, but we have hope.”

At the end of one of the more tumultuous years in the United States  in my lifetime, I was drawn back to that passage, and how I believe the concept of hope has been turned on its head in the past 12 months. Recently, the idea I’ve been thinking about is finding how to start feeling hopeful again.

But then I re-read that last sentence from three years ago. The word that jumps out to me now is not ‘hope’. My attention was drawn to the world ‘control’. In manufacturing, I’ve learned ‘control’ is both a noun and a verb. It identifies a system as well as the ability to use that system to affect change. It is about action. It requires us not to simply stand on the sidelines and allow the current state to continue without rigorous examination. It also requires us to view what is working, and why, as opposed to simply examining what is wrong.

In the midst of tragedies of human and natural causes, we found a way to respond with simple humanity. We have been there for one another. We cannot control the trigger finger of a lunatic or the destructive force of nature; what we have seen is that those events do not deter us from coming back together as a community.

Even when we do not agree on what caused the problem, we stick together in the tough times. We may not be able to control everything, but we can control how we move forward. America has not been alone in dealing with such tragedies. In fact, there seems no place on earth that has not been touched by these tough times in 2017. Yet it does remind us of our shared humanity. In the world’s 218 countries, of all stripes of races and religions, we’re all in this together.

We observe this ultimate reality TV show, unable to avoid the 24-hour news cycle. As sabers rattle and our “leaders” on all sides jockey for position and power, we still find there is much joy and wonder to be found in life. We gathered out on our front lawns  this summer to gaze skyward and (one would hope safely) observe a solar eclipse. Such moments should remind us that we’re still pretty small in the larger picture.

So we cannot control everything, but we can focus on those things we can control, and we can examine where we are today, and we can determine how to improve and the priorities for that improvement. We can invest in improvement. We can focus on improvement.

‘Focus’ is another word I’ve spent some time pondering in the past few weeks. I recently started re-reading a book by Tim Gallway, who wrote the Inner Game series of books in the 1990s. It started with “The Inner Game of Tennis ” in 1997 and he continued to discuss how we get into a ‘zone’ in sports, or at work in books on the topics of golf, and finally, “The Inner Game of Work.”

In that book, Gallway wrote, “Focus is what distracts us from whatever is distracting us.” It’s a great concept, and it is the essence of control and of improvement. There is much noise, and there is much to concern us. These  elements should not distract us from a focus on improvement in all facets of our lives.

I think that’s a hopeful way to end the year.

Bob Vavra is the Content Manager for Plant Engineering at CFE Media.