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In a modern office there are no specialist typists; we all need to be able to pick our way around a keyboard. PowerPoint has made amateur slide designers of eve

In a modern office there are no specialist typists; we all need to be able to pick our way around a keyboard. PowerPoint has made amateur slide designers of everyone. Once a slide would be produced by a professional, because no one else had the necessary equipment or training. Now anyone can have a go — and they do. I'm struggling to follow. Putting your thoughts down on a piece of paper is something we all need to be able to do. Do people waste time doing it? Sure, some people will waste some time. A myriad of reasons to it. Boredom, clumsiness, a strong need to let out your creative sides, just to name a few. Perhaps this entire piece comes down to being more aware of the things that distract you. The side quests that often start small, but end up consuming large portions of your time. In a modern office there are no specialist typists Sure, in a modern office you won't come across many such people (amongst other esoteric examples). But there's a counter argument here - forcefully introducing additional bureaucracy by proxies is just as hurtful, if not more.

fsloth 9y ago
"Sure, in a modern office you won't come across many such people (amongst other esoteric examples). But there's a counter argument here - forcefully introducing additional bureaucracy by proxies is just as hurtful, if not more." Who said anything about bureaucracy? It all could be lean and agile - but with tasks such that people could concentrate on the value adding tasks. It seems more efficient to hire less people to do n amount of tasks but what happens when the productivity of those people plunge? As an extreme example, we in finland use the public health services a lot. Every time I go there, the doctor fiddles about on his computer doing this adminsterial task and that. It would be much more efficient if the doctor had some secretary who could manage the bureaucratic fiddly bits and let the doctor focus on medicine.
- xtrapolate 9y ago
  The doctor example is great, but where do we draw the line exactly? Offloading some aspects of your work by utilising other people and their expertise is surely the way to go, but there's a balance to be kept. Sticking to your example, good secretaries (much like good engineers) are expensive, and are hard to come by - isn't that enough to explain why public health services skimp on those? You could argue that in an ideal world/society, everyone would just do those few specific things they're really good at/love, and nothing else.
  - fsloth 9y ago
    Calling out for highly trained secretaries to do the doctors typing is really a strawman. As a patient I don't really care of the quality of the bureaucratic output if the case is one-shot - which most are. So in that instance they could have a drunk monkey punching the computer. What I do care about, is that the doctor could see more of these one-shot patients and just forget the damn computer. The value the records add, is providing a long term storage for my current diagnostic case. Once the issue passes, the value of those records plunges to zero. Calling whatever it is, 80/20 principle, tipping point management - not everything needs to have 0.999999 level of certainty. In the one-shot bureaucratic typist thingie 0.9 would suffice. Once the medical issue becomes more prolonged and difficult, added care in the papers section will start to add value (as patient information is logged and tracked, and so on). On the other hand, since this is a medical setting and we insist training on the secretary, the secretary could add immense value, by just going through the checklists the doctor really does not remember to do. The constantly recurring problem when getting medication is the doctors checking for incompatibilities with the patients physical condition and other medication. From my experience, if there is any underlying condition they screw it up half the time. As an example is a relative of mine with nut allergy and some ongoing medication - the stuff this persons gets described half the time has bad outcomes when combined with either of them. So in this instance the only valuable outcome would have been applicable medicine, and since that was screwed up, the value of output is zero, and the amount of resources used is... non-trivial at least. Hospitals have solved this by having nurses following in the doctors footsteps with procedure specific checklists - and this saves lives. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/7/08-010708/en/ http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/7/08-010708/en/
    - watwut 9y ago
      The secretary you just described is going to ask way more money and has a lot more employment options. Why would she/he take a job with zero autonomy, little social status, non-flexible hours and not expect money in exchange? And once you pay her those money, is it overall saving money?
      - fsloth 9y ago

fsloth 9y ago

"Sure, in a modern office you won't come across many such people (amongst other esoteric examples). But there's a counter argument here - forcefully introducing additional bureaucracy by proxies is just as hurtful, if not more." Who said anything about bureaucracy? It all could be lean and agile - but with tasks such that people could concentrate on the value adding tasks. It seems more efficient to hire less people to do n amount of tasks but what happens when the productivity of those people plunge? As an extreme example, we in finland use the public health services a lot. Every time I go there, the doctor fiddles about on his computer doing this adminsterial task and that. It would be much more efficient if the doctor had some secretary who could manage the bureaucratic fiddly bits and let the doctor focus on medicine.

xtrapolate 9y ago
The doctor example is great, but where do we draw the line exactly? Offloading some aspects of your work by utilising other people and their expertise is surely the way to go, but there's a balance to be kept. Sticking to your example, good secretaries (much like good engineers) are expensive, and are hard to come by - isn't that enough to explain why public health services skimp on those? You could argue that in an ideal world/society, everyone would just do those few specific things they're really good at/love, and nothing else.
- fsloth 9y ago
  Calling out for highly trained secretaries to do the doctors typing is really a strawman. As a patient I don't really care of the quality of the bureaucratic output if the case is one-shot - which most are. So in that instance they could have a drunk monkey punching the computer. What I do care about, is that the doctor could see more of these one-shot patients and just forget the damn computer. The value the records add, is providing a long term storage for my current diagnostic case. Once the issue passes, the value of those records plunges to zero. Calling whatever it is, 80/20 principle, tipping point management - not everything needs to have 0.999999 level of certainty. In the one-shot bureaucratic typist thingie 0.9 would suffice. Once the medical issue becomes more prolonged and difficult, added care in the papers section will start to add value (as patient information is logged and tracked, and so on). On the other hand, since this is a medical setting and we insist training on the secretary, the secretary could add immense value, by just going through the checklists the doctor really does not remember to do. The constantly recurring problem when getting medication is the doctors checking for incompatibilities with the patients physical condition and other medication. From my experience, if there is any underlying condition they screw it up half the time. As an example is a relative of mine with nut allergy and some ongoing medication - the stuff this persons gets described half the time has bad outcomes when combined with either of them. So in this instance the only valuable outcome would have been applicable medicine, and since that was screwed up, the value of output is zero, and the amount of resources used is... non-trivial at least. Hospitals have solved this by having nurses following in the doctors footsteps with procedure specific checklists - and this saves lives. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/7/08-010708/en/ http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/7/08-010708/en/
  - watwut 9y ago
    The secretary you just described is going to ask way more money and has a lot more employment options. Why would she/he take a job with zero autonomy, little social status, non-flexible hours and not expect money in exchange? And once you pay her those money, is it overall saving money?
    - fsloth 9y ago