Quotes About Efficiency

Whether we like it or not, meetings are the closest thing to an operating room, a playing field, or a stage that we have.

organizational clarity allows a company to delegate more effectively and empower its employees with a true sense of confidence.

When employees at all levels share a common understanding of where the company is headed, what success looks like, whom their competitors are, and what needs to be achieved to claim victory, there is a remarkably low level of wasted time and energy and a powerful sense of traction.

The key to managing this challenge, of course, is to identify a reasonable number of issues that will have the greatest possible impact on the success of your organization, and then spend most of your time thinking about, talking about, and working on those issues.

I believe that all successful organizations share two qualities: they are smart, and they are healthy. An organization demonstrates that it is smart by developing intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features, and financial models that lead to competitive advantage over its rivals. It demonstrates that it is healthy by eliminating politics and confusion, which leads to higher morale, lower turnover, and higher productivity.

From the moment he began using the disciplines on his yellow sheet, Rich was continually narrowing the scope of his responsibilities to a core set of activities. One of the areas that he most adamantly insisted on being involved in, and which had a profound connection to each of the four disciplines, was the hiring of new employees.

More than a third of Rich's fifty-five-hour workweeks (fifty was just not realistic for him) was spent interviewing potential hires.

conflict is productive

It is ironic that so many people avoid conflict in the name of efficiency, because healthy conflict is actually a time saver.

Contrary to the assumptions of his rivals, Rich O'Connor had no tolerance for touchy-feely off-site meetings. In fact, his staff had come to refer to his meetings as "hug-free zones," a term they coined during Telegraph's first management retreat five years earlier.

of the team members. Kathryn continued, "I want all of you challenging each other about what you are doing, how you are spending your time, whether you are making enough progress.

When people come together and set aside their individual needs for the good of the whole, they can accomplish what might have looked impossible on paper. They do this by eliminating the politics and confusion that plague most organizations. As a result, they get more done in less time and with less cost.

The ultimate test of a great team is results.

I'm not saying we need to be spending more time in meetings, necessarily. But we definitely need to be having more than one type of meeting.

More than anything else, cohesive teams are efficient. They arrive at decisions more quickly and with greater buy-in than non-cohesive teams do.

Killick,' he cried, folding and sealing it. 'That's for the post. Is the Doctor ready?' 'Ready and waiting these fourteen minutes,' said Stephen in a loud, sour voice. 'What a wretched tedious slow hand you are with a pen, upon my soul. Scratch-scratch, gasp-gasp. You might have written the Iliad in half the time, and a commentary upon it, too.

Would you expect a mutiny?' 'Mutiny in the sense of outright revolt and refusal of command? No. But from some of the people I expect muttering, discontent, ill-will; and nothing makes work slower or more inefficient or more unsafe than ill-will and its perpetual quarrels.

True brawn and power are developed by hard training sessions, not by long training sessions. Quality over quantity is an excellent motto for strength.

Many weight-trainers—no doubt influenced by bodybuilding philosophy—believe that rippling muscles are the source of strength. In fact, it's the nervous system that causes the muscle cells to fire, so your strength and power are largely determined by the efficiency of your nervous system.

One defense expert, writing for the International News Service, noted that the final cost of bringing a soldier into the 1941 maneuvers, over and above the cost of keeping that same man in camp for the same amount of time, was approximately $ 22. He added: "That's probably the cheapest cost there has ever been for turning camp soldiers into field soldiers. And it's field soldiers that you fight wars with." 33

Clean this place out. I want hard drives, gadgets, papers, circuit boards, everything. Grab the pencil sharpener if it looks interesting.

Always produce.

A great programmer, on a roll, could create a million dollars worth of wealth in a couple weeks. A mediocre programmer over the same period will generate zero or even neg- ative wealth (e.g. by introducing bugs). This is why so many of the best programmers are libertarians.

Companies often wonder what to outsource and what not to. One possible answer: outsource any job that's not directly exposed to competitive pressure, because outsourcing it will thereby expose it to competitive pressure. (I mean "outsource" in the sense of hiring another company to do it, not the more specific sense of hiring an overseas company.)