This book, by Robert K. Cooper, was on the library's newly arrived shelf. It's pretty good, although if you read biz books a lot, there's a lot you'll want to skim. Still, the principles he talks about are good to think on. The subtitle of the book is "the five keys to surpassing everyone's expectations." These keys are: 1. Direction, not motion 2. Focus, not time 3. Capacity, not conformity 4. Energy, not effort 5. Impact, not intentions Each key has three or four supporting chapters that talk about subprinciples. Some things that I identified with from key one is that a) "good and great are the enemies of possible," a quote Cooper attributes to his grandfather. It's pretty self-explanatory though. The other thing is he talks about "what's automatic, accelerates." Basically, if you can put effort into something until it becomes automatic, you've won the battle. So focus resources on issues and behaviors that will eventually
Interesting topic over at Signal vs Noise. It occurred to me that my attention to designy-type stuff might not make too much sense to everyone given my association/nonprofit bent. To me it makes sense though and here's why: 1) design is more and more important in our lives and anyone who's a manager of anything ought to follow design trends at least cursorily; and 2) a lot of design and usability issues can be used as metaphors--or as models--for organizational issues faced by managers. More on this topic as it emanates from my gray matter, which is a sight to behold!