Book review - Slack by Tom DeMarco

Organizations are effective only to the extent that all their workers are totally and eternally busy. Written by Tom DeMarco more than 20 years ago, this book fights again this idea. Companies need workers with "slack", with gaps of freedom in their they by day. These gaps will allow your company to change, improve, reinvent and grow.

Highlighted quotes

Rather than providing a summary of the book, which may be biased or influenced by my personal opinions or writing style, I prefer to spotlight select phrases from the text that I found particularly inspiring.

👉 In such an organization, there is a characteristic mantra: "Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up…" think of that mantra as the sound of an organization going wrong

👉 80 % of a manager's time might reasonably be spent with his/her workers

👉 When companies can't invent, it's usually because their people are to damn busy

👉 The long-term effect of too much pressure is demotivation, burnout and loss of key people. The best managers use pressure only rarely and never over extended periods

👉 Extended overtime is a productivity-reduction technique. It reduces the effect of each hour worked. […]. The 12-hour days don't accomplish any more than the 8 hours days

👉 Change implies abandonment. Your people have to abandon their mastery of the familiar, and become novices once again. They can only make it if they feel safe

👉 There is no such thing as "healthy" competition whithin a knowledge organization: all internal competition is destructive. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.