The Heart Surgeon and The Mechanic

A heart surgeon took his car to his local garage for a regular service, where he usually exchanged a little friendly banter with the owner, a skilled but not especially wealthy mechanic.

"So tell me," says the mechanic, "I've been wondering about what we both do for a living, and how much more you get paid than me.."

"Yes?.." says the surgeon.

"Well look at this," says the mechanic, as he worked on a big complicated engine, "I check how it's running, open it up, fix the valves, and put it all back together so it works good as new.. We basically do the same job don't we? And yet you are paid ten times what I am - how do you explain that?"

The surgeon thought for a moment, and smiling gently, replied,"Try it with the engine running.."

Zero Email Policy

I think this is a great direction of a solution for "information overload" in a company setting, but I am not sure if it will not have a lot of "unintended consequences", just as the Blackberrys and iPhones have caused, of creating a 'constant need' for communicating.

 http://yhoo.it/thryKA

The Zen Master of Substraction

Another article about Steve Jobs, and his ability to focus.   Great example at the end of the article showing how he chose to prioritize.

http://bit.ly/rXtfy5

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Santiago Velásquez Martínez

"Life is a constant word problem" - Michael Owen

The Steve Jobs Code

Matt May blogs about the Steve Jobs Code, or the main lessons from Steve Jobs, extracted from the official Steve Jobs biography written by Walter Isaacson.

http://bit.ly/vvlcSb

Life of an Idea

Matt May of "In Pursuit of Elegance" shares some links of Toyota's "Ideas for Good" project, and also, a very nice video about the birth of an idea.

http://bit.ly/sbkqWj

Enjoy.

The George Constanza Approach

HBR talks about a Seinfeld Episode where George Constanza, the famous insecure character, decides to do the opposite of what he's always done and things start to work out really well for him.

http://bit.ly/vXGuHc

Seth Godin's great blog post of some years ago, "The Chief No Officer", is very similar to the approach described in the HBR article.   Here is an excerpt of Seth's writing at the time:

"Appoint a CNO—chief no officer. No longer can someone say no to an idea and leave it at that. If you want to turn something down, you've got to pass it on to your boss. Then either he says yes or gives it to his boss. For a "no" to be official, it's got to be approved by the chief no officer and countersigned by every manager along the way."

I guess it sometimes pays to be a contrarian, not only in the stock markets.

Beyond Budgeting

Henrik Matterson, TOC consultant in Europe, blogs about using alternatives to annual budget in corporations, just as Dr. Deming suggested, in his 14 Points of Management.

He also provides some book links with suggested solutions.

http://bit.ly/vFWLns