Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

Re:Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivi... by edelans on Wednesday March 30, 2022 @01:26PM (#30858195)

Amen. or as Peter Drucker puts it (he is dubbed as "the founder of modern management" on Wikipedia) :

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker

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Re:Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivi... by saidajigumi on Wednesday March 30, 2022 @01:43PM (#30858420)

And likewise, this theme shows up in Tom DeMarco's classic book Slack, which contrasts "efficiency" (the rate at which an organization is moveing towards some goal) vs "effectiveness" (the ability of the organization to choose and steer towards better goals). An important theme of the book is that an organization running full-tilt (maximum "efficiency") intrinsically reduces/eliminates its needed human "slack" to reflect and iterate towards the correct goals. DeMarco also digs into into the many organizational and management anti-patterns, with supporting research, that harm both effectiveness and efficiency (and just plain human well being...)

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Re:Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivi... by edelans on Wednesday March 30, 2022 @04:08PM (#30860175)

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

Damned, I had to search for the author and... it's also from Peter Drucker !

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Re:Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivi... by rawgabbit on Wednesday March 30, 2022 @02:48PM (#30859261)

"If you don't know where you are going, it doesn't matter how fast you get there."

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Re:Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivi... by edelans on Wednesday March 30, 2022 @04:05PM (#30860134)

nice one as well !

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