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44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good ROI on this book, February 5, 2005
This book is very humble both in its size and format but contains some true pearls of wisdom. Here are some of the highlights that I will retain from this easy and pleasant read: * In our constant quest to make our organizations more efficient (reduction of overhead, standardization of processes, overworking management and resources), we have actually made them less effective. The solution lies in (re)introducing `slack'. Slack is the lubricant required to effect change, it is the degree of freedom that enables reinvention and true effectiveness. * Multitasking and overtime, thought to be ways of getting the most out of the teams, are actually having a negative impact on productivity. Multitasking, specifically for knowledge workers, causes at least a 15% penalty in productivity. It is much higher for tasks (such as troubleshooting or design for instance) that require complete immersion before the resource can actually make progress. Systematic overtime is also proven to be an ineffective way of improving project cycle-time. While it may provide short term gains, the demands it puts on resources quickly reduces their productivity and effectiveness. An alternative to systematic overtime are well calculated and well timed sprints (focused and value-added, yet handled as exceptions). * Overworked managers also have a very negative impact on organizational effectiveness. It is indeed managers, and more specifically middle managers, that can the most effectively champion and effect change in organizations. The more overworked they are, the less time they have to reinvent the ways of working. Those same middle managers will be most effective in bringing about positive changes if they can collaborate with each other, which in turns requires that organizations stop fostering destructive internal competition. * Prescriptive processes, pushed top-down, are a form of disempowerment. They are a result of fearful management that is allergic to failure. These processes succeed in dictate every aspect of how you should do you work but fail in providing guidance in doing the `hard parts'. They are often heavy and form an armor that reduces the mobility and agility of teams, hence resulting in less competitive organizations. The solution is to put the ownership of processes between the hands of those who do the work. * An effective change manager is a person that can remonstrate, repeat, correct, encourage, cajole, motivate, and has great powers of persuasion. He/she is less of a boss and more of a negotiator. Great change managers have a lot of markers to call in. Markers come from favors done and confidence earned in the past. They have built a reservoir of trust and tap into it to entice their people to embrace change. Change managers have to come from within the organization, a stranger has no markers to call in, just a little `honeymoon capital'. * The best time to introduce change is in a period of growth. Decline causes anxiety and makes people more resistant to change.
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A merciless exposure of self-indulgent management, February 12, 2005
It's about 100 years since Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced the philosophy of "scientific management", with its offspring such as the time-and-motion study and the mythical man-month. That's about how long it takes for a big idea to soak into the awareness of managers everywhere - especially those who are more committed to looking good than to managing well. Tom DeMarco, co-author (with Tim Lister) of the magnificent "Peopleware", has done it again. Although "Slack" runs a little over 200 pages, you will probably read it in less than four hours because it is actually quite hard to put down. You will keep on thinking, "Yes, I've seen that!" and "Those words ring a bell". In the course of his consultancy practice, which has taken him into many organizations including Apple, HP, Lucent and IBM, DeMarco has noticed a lot of counterproductive management behaviour. Many acts and policies that look good in the short term lead to corporate death in the longer term. More specifically, it is always possible to squeeze out a few more percentage points of "efficiency" - but only at the cost of damaging morale, precipitating burnout and losing the flexibility without which sensible decisions cannot be made. Faster isn't always better. Effectiveness matters more than efficiency. People are not interchangeable "resources". Without challenge and growth, the best employees soon leave. Overheads are not necessarily bad. Consciously or subconsciously, we already know these things. DeMarco just hammers them home so we will never forget them again. I really have only one quibble with "Slack". DeMarco has no business criticising Dilbert and his fellow engineers for "giving up" on their pointy-haired bosses. Sure, employees have a responsibility to make allowances and go the extra mile - but the PHBs systematically abuse every extra bit of slack that anyone cuts them. That's part of the joke, of course. This is not just a book that will confirm your suspicions, and reassure you that you are not the one who is going mad. It's a simple, easily-understood message that everyone in business needs to hear. Most of all those right at the top - DeMarco says that many employees have told him, "I wish my boss could be here now to hear you say that".
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
People are not machines, surprise surprise!, April 13, 2001
About time someone wrote about human nature and the fact that people are not machines. The myth of "total efficiency" still persists in the workplace. This book is in sharp contrast to practices that have plagued the workers for decades; women who sewed in sweatshop factories in the early 1900's were carefully monitored on how long they took to make bathroom breaks. Even now software is available that can count every keystroke a worker makes (to check on their efficiency.) The dream that careful monitoring and structuring of the workplace to get the maximum "juice" out of workers is disproved in this book. This isn't even totally new information; a very old study found that brightening the lights in a factory improved performance. Then another study found that DIMMING the lights also improved performance. In other words, people are not machines. They need downtime, change, meaningful work and mental breaks or they burn out. A very timely and helpful book.
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