All tagged effectiveness
Gary Klein’s 2013 book “Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights” is a good read, as I’ve found with his his other books. He likes to explore a topic from stories and search for corroborating links to draw together new conclusions. And as this book is about insight, the overall story of this book describes his journey of discovery as he delved into the topic. I particularly liked his discussion of the challenges that organizations face in gaining and using insights.
The goal isn't efficiency. The goal is getting the right things done.
The Ministry of Ideas podcast has a recent episode of the idea of "(In)Efficiency." It was also excerpted in yesterday's Boston Globe, "Long Before Uber, Efficiency Was Divine." It was informative, but there is a big element that is missing for me: why is the concept so strongly embedded in the way we think - so much that it actually damages individuals and organizations.
I've been involved in knowledge management for nearly 20 years. And over most of that time, one of the most familiar ideas is that we spend 20% of their time searching for stuff. I wonder. Is this 20% of time truly wasted?
We seem to be addicted to busy. Does the busyness help? Does it hurt? Do we swim around in a lake, getting nowhere? Or do we row down the river, ensuring we don't get stuck?
Kevin Fox's book, Aligned & Engaged, talks about creating effective teamwork in an organization. He provides 29 practices that will help any leader create more and more alignment and engagement in order to improve the bottom line.
A great discussion of systems thinking by Fred Kofman, which ties into much of what the folks in the Theory of Constraints camp talk about. In the first minute, he says several times some version of, "To optimize the overall system, you must sub-optimize the subsystems."
I've written about the common focus on efficiency several times here. This time it's inspired by an HBR blogs article by Casey Haksins and Peter Sims, "The Most Efficient Die Early.'
As many of you know, I am always looking for better ways to do my own work - personal knowledge management or just plain old being smart about how I work. But why is that? Why do I think it is so important that my own work moves so smoothly?
A week ago, the Sunday Boston Globe carried a piece on Eugene Litvak's work on helping hospitals improve. Flow is the key.
Ron Baker has an interesting pair of articles in which he presents the underlying problem that he has with inordinate focus on the billable hour at law firms. He talks about a problem that is familiar to anyone who uses efficiency as their primary measure: it severely inhibits growth. He also presents some good arguments on a path out of this situation.