Did you suck at ‘Economics’ in college.  I did.  So when my friend and mentor, Ron Baker, recommended that I read The Economic Naturalist by Robert Frank, I smiled politely, assured him I would, and then blew it off.  (I did buy it, just so I could document my intent and not feel entirely guilty for lying through my teeth.)  Last week, I again found myself in an airport, having mistakenly thrown this tome in my computer case, thinking it was an adventure novel.  With no other entertainment, besides trying to determine which passenger had the worst hang-over in the Las Vegas airport, I read the book. Read more…

I’ve posted frequently about the deleterious effect I believe time sheets have on professional knowledge workers and professional knowledge firms. Regardless of the origin, or the use for which they were originally intended they have become at once a measurement of productivity, value, worth and efficiency. And I don’t believe they do any of those things particularly well. Granted they can generate useful and important information for reactive decision making but the costs of that information to the culture of the user far outweigh any marginal benefit derived. They are a very efficient tool for micromanaging. There are other very efficient micromanagement tools as well. There are performance evaluations - which we’ve previously posted about. How about ‘checklists’? Read more…