The Feedback
We like doing more with less. But how does a manager get his or her employees to think and act this way? That’s what we asked last week in a post about productivity gains at Boeing.
Regular reader Sergio gave one simple suggestion about how to do it in the software world:
Above all, the best way to boost the productivity of software development inside an organization is to first to hire the best software developers.
Sergio also added a lot of details about productivity-boosting work arrangements. Check them out; they’re interesting.
We also asked about wunderkinds (or wunderkinder, if we want to be strict about it) who become business titans, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Peter Drucker thought inexperience could spell real trouble for most young people who become entrepreneurs. Did our readers agree?
Reader Richard B Mann PhD said it depends:
I was on my own at 16. Traveled, took whatever job was available, from busboy to RR Yard Foreman, salesman, printer, janitor, and many others. I was successful in some areas and failed in others. I learned from my failures and overcame my faults . . . made a million before I was 25.
Reader Mike Grayson wrote that young or old matters less than whether the executive has learned Drucker’s steps for making an effective decision.
This process sets the standard in decision-making, the gold standard. I would take a young executive who practiced this process over an experienced executive who flew by the seat of the pants any day.
And from business professor and renowned leadership scholar Warren Bennis we received a 2007 Wall Street Journal article in which he and Noel Tichy argue that judgment counts far more than years under the belt:
After a five-year study of leadership covering virtually all sectors of American life, we came to the inescapable conclusion that judgment regularly trumps experience. Our central finding is that judgment is the core, the nucleus of exemplary leadership. With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.