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Tips on how to work smarter from Ricardo Semler (37signals.com)
21 points by naish on April 14, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


I know it's nitpicking, but I've seen this in a few places lately, and it bugs me...

This wouldn't have surprised Mark Twain, who once apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short one.

... because as everyone knows, or should, this particularly excellent witticism was Pascal's:

I have only made this letter long because I have not had time to make it shorter. -- Lettres provinciales, Dec. 14, 1656

It's also attributed to Cicero (but I've googled for a source and can't find it) and Augustine (but what he said was a little different).

Edit: as long as a couple people are interested- more here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163425


FTA: We simply do not believe our employees have an interest in coming in late, leaving early, and doing as little as possible for as much money as their union can wheedle out of us.

This one (and delegating in general) is really, really hard. It has taken me a lot of practice to learn to trust people to turn up with what they should have. Constantly checking up on people is a good way to stop them feeling like their work is their own.

You do, along the way, get burned a few times - but when stuff is late or wrong I have had good results from doing the 5 why thing. If you don't get what you need, keep asking why until you get to the root cause. Quite often it's me (adding extra work, or being unclear about priority).

Much better to take a few minutes to get all the way to the real problem, rather than just saying nothing or going off the deep end. You find out what you need to fix (which might be the individual but probably isn't), the guys on your team get constructive feedback with clear understanding of what they need to do next time, and no one gets resentful.


Micromanaging is not good for anyone...


Good article; I work 6.5 hours a day - 4 hours of solid work. Im happy, my employers happy ... what else matters?

(of course in the sense of startup; reverse that, 4 hours of sleep can be expected)




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