Short pieces, one topic at a time.
- Personal
What developed traffic is, and why it eats your day
Developed traffic is work that never needed to happen. The source says confusion about what you are meant to produce creates it, and malice… - Personal
What to do with a message that isn't yours
A message that isn't yours is either off-line or off-origin. The source says the only correct action is to send it back to the sender… - Personal
Why it pays to name everything that eats your day
Calling a day crazy tells you nothing to fix. The source lists types of needless traffic, and two or three of them usually eat most of your… - Personal
Why handling what isn't yours piles on your load
The source calls it the biggest goof: handling needless traffic without recognizing it. Each time you do, you teach the people around you… - Personal
Why everything you put off gets done twice
The source says you can cut your work in half by not doing it twice. Each item you set aside is read and decided on again, and it only… - Personal
Completed staff work: a problem with a recommendation
Completed staff work is a request that arrives complete enough to answer with yes or no. Without it, the source says, you end up doing the… - Personal
Three baskets: the difference between pending and later
The source says three baskets, plus routing and policing, can cut your traffic worries by three quarters. The basket most people lack is… - Personal
Why a code you enforce on others stops being yours
According to the source, ethics is chosen and morals are enforced. Punish someone in the code's name and the punishment itself breaks the… - Personal
Why a decision made in advance holds up under pressure
According to the source, the Code of Honor asks you to be your own adviser, to need no praise and to never compromise with what you see… - Personal
What a manager has to understand before asking anything
According to the source, the manager's code starts with understanding where the group is headed, then living with the gap between ideal and… - Personal
How to judge people on your team, and why a clique is two
According to the source, a manager never forms or favors cliques and judges each person by their worth to the whole group. In a small firm… - Personal
Why a tidy report can be wrong, and how a code goes stale
According to the source, a manager checks that his data is true, never distorts his code and updates it ahead of time, in writing, before… - Personal
Why the manager's code obliges you to look after yourself
According to the source, a manager permits himself to be served well, economizes his effort and keeps some comforts, so he decides with a… - Personal
Why code lines are written as don'ts, and what they earn you
According to the source, nearly every clause of the Code of Honor is a negative, so you know when you broke it. Outside, the code builds… - Personal
The one question that tests whether you found the cause
According to the source, a real cause opens the door to handling the problem. An answer that leads to no action is a wrong cause, however… - Personal
Why a reasonable explanation hides the real cause
According to the source, being reasonable is the chief offender: the mind fills a gap with an explanation, and the first one you hear ends… - Personal
Why you need an ideal scene to find the cause of a problem
According to the source, finding a cause takes two pictures: what happens and what should happen. Most people hold only one, so they have… - Personal
What an outpoint is, and why missing data is hardest to see
According to the source, an outpoint is a datum offered as true that fails comparison. There are eleven kinds, and the strongest is a… - Personal
Four outpoints found in almost every small business
According to the source, four outpoints recur in small businesses: contrary facts, added time, wrong target, wrongly included data. Two… - Personal
Why the bright idea comes last when you look for a cause
According to the source, finding a cause is a closed sequence of eight steps. The first two define rather than investigate, and the bright… - Personal
What acting on a wrong cause costs, and what you find next
According to the source, a wrong cause costs you the real problem running undisturbed meanwhile. One complete case shows what a found cause… - Personal
Too much work? Why the volume is rarely the real problem
When it feels like there is too much work, the volume is almost never to blame. The source says what sinks you is mishandled items, not… - Personal
When a task is really finished, and why so much stays open
A task is finished when you won't have to handle it again, not when you did it. The source names three reasons things stay open, and what… - Personal
Why a backlog never sits still, and why it is hard to escape
A backlog is not a pile waiting for you. The source says it grows by itself, creates work that blocks you from clearing it, and half-done… - Personal
What a business code of ethics is, and why posters fail
A code of ethics is not a values poster. The source says it is a list of restrictions you take on yourself and keep even when nobody checks. - Personal
Why managing by fear backfires, and what works instead
A threat works once, and then people report what you want to hear. The source says a manager leads with subgoals and gives each person… - Personal
What you owe your team, and what your team owes you
The source says responsibility between a person and a group must weigh the same both ways. Demand it without giving it back, and a quiet… - Personal
Why your explanation for a business problem is not the cause
A good explanation for a business problem is not always its cause. The source says a cause is measured by results, and fixing the wrong one… - Personal
How to tell you found the wrong cause of a business problem
According to the source, two signs give away a wrong cause: you knew it long ago and nothing changed, or you have to strain to invent a fix. - Personal
Why the economy and your supplier are not the real cause
The source says the real cause of a business problem is limited to what you control. The economy or a supplier can be true and still not be…
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