Don't let employees waste their time.

Author: Di Marco
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: For most companies, efficiency means profit and growth. But what if your "super-efficient" company is slowing down its development and constantly incurring losses? What if your employees are doing the work of two or even more people with one person, with no time to plan, organize tasks, or even eat lunch? What if you're busy hiring employees but still unable to fill the gaps left by departing staff? What would that situation look like? Tom Di Marco discovered a principle that runs counter to common intuition, explaining how measures to increase efficiency can sometimes slow down a company's development. If your actual goal is to make your company more responsive, he suggests that what you need is not greater efficiency but greater flexibility. Flexibility is the degree to which a company can change itself. Designing flexibility into daily work and giving employees more breathing room not only increases their efficiency but also helps to rediscover their work potential.