Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total EfficiencyIf your company’s goal is to become fast, responsive, and agile, more efficiency is not the answer--you need more slack. Why is it that today’s superefficient organizations are ailing? Tom DeMarco, a leading management consultant to both Fortune 500 and up-and-coming companies, reveals a counterintuitive principle that explains why efficiency efforts can slow a company down. That principle is the value of slack, the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change. Implementing slack could be as simple as adding an assistant to a department and letting high-priced talent spend less time at the photocopier and more time making key decisions, or it could mean designing workloads that allow people room to think, innovate, and reinvent themselves. It means embracing risk, eliminating fear, and knowing when to go slow. Slack allows for change, fosters creativity, promotes quality, and, above all, produces growth. With an approach that works for new- and old-economy companies alike, this revolutionary handbook debunks commonly held assumptions about real-world management, and gives you and your company a brand-new model for achieving and maintaining true effectiveness. |
Contents
Madmen in the Halls | 3 |
Busyness | 7 |
The Myth of Fungible Resource | 12 |
When Hurry Up Really Means Slow Down | 22 |
Managing Eve | 26 |
Business Instead of Busyness | 33 |
LOST BUT MAKING GOOD TIME | 43 |
The Cost of Pressure | 45 |
Vision | 133 |
Leadership and Leadership | 137 |
Dilbert Reconsidered | 142 |
Fear and Safety | 146 |
Trust and Trustworthiness | 150 |
Timing of Change | 155 |
What Middle Management Is There For | 159 |
Where Learning Happens | 163 |
Aggressive Schedules | 54 |
Overtime | 59 |
A Little Sleight of Hand in the Accounting Department | 71 |
Power Sweeper | 75 |
The Second Law of Bad Management | 80 |
Culture of Fear | 86 |
Litigation | 93 |
Process Obsession | 102 |
Quality | 111 |
Efficient andor Effective | 122 |
Management by Objectives | 126 |
CHANGE AND GROWTH | 131 |
Other editions - View all
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency Tom DeMarco Limited preview - 2001 |
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency Tom DeMarco No preview available - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
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