Quotes About Efficiency

in most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence." He warned that extremely skilled and productive employees often face criticism, and are fired if they don't start performing worse. Their presence "disrupts and therefore violates the first commandment of hierarchical life: the hierarchy must be preserved.

The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity Quotient, M.Q. MQ = No. of employees at level of incompetence × 100 Total no. of employees in hierarchy Obviously, when MQ reaches 100, no useful work will be accomplished at all.

Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.

The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.

IT SHOULD BE clear by now that when an employee reaches his level of incompetence, he can no longer do any useful work. Incompetent, Yes! Idle, No! This in no way suggests that the ultimate promotion suddenly changes the former worker into an idler. Not at all! In most cases he still wants to work; he still makes a great show of activity; he sometimes thinks he is working. Yet actually little that is useful is accomplished

They order, said I, this matter better in France.

Oh, we don't use rabbits anymore," the pretty young doctor laughed, slipping the needle into the soft crook of Marilyn's arm. "We use frogs now. Much faster and easier. Isn't modern science wonderful?

Practicality was baked into their bones.

Practicality was baked into their bones. They wasted nothing, especially not time.

L'ozio rende lente le ore e veloci gli anni. L'operosità rapide le ore e lenti gli anni.

You can't creatively help a business until you know how it works.

I learned that no matter how cool the technology seemed to be, it was valuable only if it solved a real problem that was urgent and provided quantifiable benefits. - Vik Chadha

A process isn't a process unless it's written down.

Complex problems do not demand complex solutions.

As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of the science. Whenever any result is sought by its aid, the question will then arise by what course of calculation can these results be arrived at by the machine in the shortest time?

At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.

If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.

Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients come in for a visit.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.

That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time, which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it no small deduction for the life of man.

An active manager must overcome the drag of about 3.25 percent in annual operating costs. If the fund manager is only to match the market's historical 9 percent return, he or she must return 12.25 percent before all those costs. In other words, to do merely as well as the market, an active fund manager must be able to outperform the market return by over one-third or 34.1 percent!5