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My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a differ
by dade_ 4y ago
My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since.
I explained this isn’t about exerting less effort, but that for the same effort we get a heck of a lot more done. I guess that’s when I first realized that management consulting can be a good thing.
Of course, 30 years later, I know management consultants are often frauds that have no idea what they are talking about or doing. They make business benefits by slowing wage growth and by essentially forcing smaller groups of people to do more work by laying off their coworkers. Not the efficiency I had in mind.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/04/09/how-mba-wielding-bosses-boost-profits https://www.economist.com/business/2022/04/09/how-mba-wieldi...
The protestant work ethic is a powerful tool, but people need to know that it is a religious value now woven into society. Not to avoid doing productive things, because I think it can provide the most amazing successes and a wonderful life, but to be aware that it is horribly abused in America by business management. “Idle hands are the devil’s hands.” And it drives all sorts of compulsion.
None of this is new, but if I could go back in time, I would find Chuck Palahniuk, and explain to him that the problem in our society isn’t the banks, but the big consulting firms. Oh that would be a much more satisfying ending to Fight Club.
- SilasX 4y ago> My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since. Bojack Horseman: “Are you gonna sail around the cape like a real man, or are you gonna cut through the Panama Canal like a Democrat?”
- hbosch 4y agoThe matrix for effort vs. impact is something I find myself drawing in meetings a lot. Effort Low High ┌───────────┬───────────┐ I │ │ │ m Low │ Ok │ Bad │ p │ │ │ a ├───────────┼───────────┤ c │ │ │ t High │ Perfect │ Ok │ │ │ │ └───────────┴───────────┘
- jrochkind1 4y agoThe best simple way to prioritize a backlog. Engineering team is responsible for assigning "effort" dimension; product/stakeholder team is responsible for assigning "impact" dimension. Then we see what's in high impact/low effort, and that's what we're gonna work on.
- travisjungroth 4y agoI came up with almost the same activity but didn't think of having different groups decide the dimensions. Some random stuff: Use stack ranking. Avoids "everything is a priority" and related mistakes. Effort and impact both have a long tail distribution, something like power law. It's probably power law because it's easy to be off by an order of magnitude. "Impact" is easier to get wrong because it's going to the high end. Don't think most impactful and second most impactful have a similar impact because they're close in rank. It's easy for #1 to be 10-100x #2.
- jventura 4y agoSo, it pays off to keep effort low most of the times, right? I agree with the matrix, so I cannot find another conclusion..