Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

by Tom DeMarco

Slack is an outstanding management book full of wisdom about corporate culture, change, failure, learning, quality, risk management, productivity, and managing people.

“You can’t grow if you can’t change at all.” Slack is “the lubricant of change… Slack represents operational capacity sacrificed in the interests of long-term health… Learning to think of it that way (instead of as waste) is what distinguishes organizations that are ‘in business’ from those that are merely busy.”

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Stragility

stragility

Stragility: Excelling at Strategic Changes

by Ellen R. Auster and Lisa Hillenbrand

“Tragically, more than 70 percent of change efforts fail and in most cases the organization emerges weaker—exhausted, demoralized, and confused.”  To combat this, authors Auster and Hillenbrand have coined the portmanteau word “Stragility” to represent a skill set for “strategic, agile, people-powered change… Without ongoing agility, even good strategies will fail.” Continue reading “Stragility”