The Three Joys of Honda
Heath Harding at the Illinois Leadership Center (here) sent me a link to a post in the Positive Psychology News Daily called Honda and the Joy of Engineering in which the three joys of Honda are discussed. The title and the post stuck in Heath’s mind and mine, because of the name of this blog and company and because in the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry) we talked to the freshmen about three joys from the very first day: the joy of engineering, the joy of learning, and the joy of community.
in 1951 Honda’s founder, Mr Soichiro Honda, wrote a Management Policy document which spoke of 3 joys:
- The joy of making
- The joy of selling
- The joy of buying
Of course, these joys are different from iFoundry’s three, but the post author, Bridget Grenville-Cleave, suggests that we all take a page out of Honda’s play book and articulate particular joys for our organizations:
Don’t shy away from positive emotions at work. They have a place in every successful company. If this seems a bit scary, you could start by looking at how to create a more healthy balance of right brain and left brain, feeling and thinking, intuition and analysis. Alternatively, if you had to suggest Three Joys for your company, what would they be and why?
Great question. What are your three joys at work and why?