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Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

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Are you updating your business tools?

by Rick Baker
On May 9, 2013

About Tools & Business Improvements


It started with rocks and sticks. In our early days, we used them to do work.

We needed them to perform what our bodies could not do. We used tools to make work easier and less risky. We used rocks to injure prey. We used rocks to scrape the meat off bones. We used rocks to open shells. We burned sticks to keep us warm. We burned sticks to protect ourselves from animals.

We used sticks & stones to make spears for hunting. 

We used sticks to support us when our legs were injured and we used sticks as spears for fishing. 

 

Later we used rocks and slings to hunt prey from a distance. We used sticks to create bows and arrows for protection and hunting.

Tools have played a major role in our lives...in summary, 5 ways:

  1. Making them,
  2. Exchanging them, 
  3. Putting them to good use, 
  4. Maintaining them, &
  5. Upgrading them [as technologies and our bank accounts allow].
 
And now, with really-advanced technologies, tools are creating really-advanced problems for us...call them techno-problems.
 
Techno-Problems: here are a few examples:
 
Yes - our increasing demand for higher-technology and innovative tools has generated techno-problems.
 
We need to fix that.
 
The solution is: seeking simple and one important aspect is simplifying our tools.
 
Some suggestions:
  • Less is better...limit the amount of information you are exposed to. Be information-selective. Employ the 80/20 Rule. These reductions will allow you to focus on what's important. 
  • Use 1-Page Tools: demystify process and help your people get over work-process hurdles
  • Take advantage of proprietary software
  • Remove system & process gaps...those work-flow disconnects that cause duplication of work, unnecessary month-end and project-completion overtime and other things that really annoy your people
 
 

 

 

Thought Tweet #734

by Rick Baker
On May 9, 2013

Thought Tweet #734 I'm annoyed by that cliché, 'skin in the game'. I want to hear about skull in the game.

 

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

Let's forget about putting money in & getting that pound of flesh and set our sights a bit higher...that is, let's concentrate on kilograms of neurons packaged in open-minded skulls. It is time we started to recognize the attributes delivered in the form of thick skin and thin skulls.

Tags:

Brain: about the Human Brain | Thick Skin & Thin Skull | Thought Tweets

Copyright © 2012. W.F.C (Rick) Baker. All Rights Reserved.