Slack & Blink

I read Tom DeMarco's Slack and it made me question my own role as a process owner. The whole book seems to be somewhat manifesto against the sort of 'efficiency' that targets keeping everyone busy and also for management by objectives. The second one has been criticized ever since W. Edgar Deming, who I most relate with systems thinking.

In the end, Slack isn't against efficiency. At least that's my interpretation. It tries to make a separation between making individual parts (seem) efficient (busy) versus making the overall system efficient. I guess the lean approach would anyway consist of having enough slack to keep the flow smooth.

Another topic Slack points out is the culture of fear and how it can effectively prevent organizational learning. In a culture of fear organization you can not take time to learn new things. You always need to be efficient and busy. Inevitably this will keep people in their comfort zones because taking the time to try new things is just too risky. To transform such organization into a learning one you would first need to make people feel safe, cut off internal competition (between units or other silos) and give people enough slack for deliberate slower-than-expert training.

Slack got me thinking about process development. Just to keep in mind that busyness and effective value delivery are two very separate things. I sure hope it stays clear to me. Reminder from time to time doesn't hurt.


After Slack I started reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink - The Power of Thinking without Thinking. It concentrates on our first impressions and thinking that we do unconsciously. I think it's very much related to Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. (Now I realize that Gladwell wrote Blink six years before the other book. I just read them in reverse chronological order.) I analyzed Kahneman's book in my previous blog posts (here, here and here). Blink also supports the idea that we operate a big part of our day on an autopilot. Many of our choices are just too import to be left for our overanalyzing conscieousness. Instead they are made more efficiently, unconsciously.

Interestingly, we cannot tell how we end up with our unconscious choices. They happen 'behind closed door'. There are many studies that indicate that we don't have a clue. We can say we like this brand more than that, but usually the reasons are not known to us. And the setup of the experiment also matters. In short sipping test Pepsi usually wins Coke. But when you drink a whole bottle at home, you might change your selection. Or artist that you don't necessarily like after hearing a short sample might still be a huge success live.

Both books have been really enjoyable and worth reading. I can easily recommend both of them.