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Our great pride slide
Pride in workmanship can only come from within, but it can be fostered, or destroyed, by external forces. Poorly designed work systems represent a set of such forces that can erode performance over time. It is important to teach your team about how significant pride in workmanship is.
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How culture can eat up your strategy
Today’s rapid changes in technology force every organization to embrace change and emphasize responsiveness in its strategy. Adding a section in the strategic business plan devoted to innovation and response to changing markets may satisfy the board of directors, but management may find great difficulty mobilizing staff members to implement this capability.
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All the makings of a Greek tragedy
You could set up an integrated healthcare system, all with the same IT system, standardized clinic rooms, every clinic tied to the other, all patient records exactly the same length and same format, all with the primary goal of providing standard quality care. Alternately, you could make an aligned healthcare system, where specialization to function is enabled and the connections between clinics are loose but focused on the same objective of safe, effective and efficient healthcare.
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The much-dreaded sweatshop really isn't
The fact of the matter is that as physically demanding and monotonous as factory work can be, for the vast majority it is a step up from what they were doing before. Factory work may be tough, but it is nothing compared to eking out a living on a small farm, hoping the rain falls this year, or working in fast food or much of the service industry.
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Revisiting Brooks' law
Computer scientist Fred Brooks wrote about this phenomenon in his popular 1975 book The Mythical Man Month. Brooks’ law claims that adding people to a late project makes it later. This was used to describe software projects, but the application of Brooks’ law is much broader. The main reason for the increased delay is that it takes time for people added to a project to become productive.
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