Latest
25
Aug
Monday Myth: A Faster Machine Produces More
We made the machine three times faster. The factory still ships forty units an hour.
Systems thinking starts where local productivity stops looking like system performance. And AI may be about to make that distinction impossible to ignore.
8 min read
23
Aug
Friday Fun: The Laws of Corporate Physics
Physics has spent several centuries developing increasingly sophisticated explanations for the behaviour of the universe. Yet one important physical environment remains surprisingly under-researched.
The corporation.
5 min read
20
Aug
Wednesday Reality: Strength Comes From Imperfection
For much of human history, making better metal appeared to mean removing what did not belong there. Ore came from
7 min read
18
Aug
Monday Myth: More Visibility Gives You More Control
The objective becomes a programme. The programme becomes initiatives. Initiatives acquire milestones. Milestones become features. Features enter quarterly roadmaps. The roadmap reaches three quarters into a future nobody has yet observed
9 min read
15
Aug
Friday Fun: The Great Corporate Cargo Cult
The expression cargo cult entered Western vocabulary through observations of religious and social movements in Melanesia, particularly around and after the Second World War.
9 min read
13
Aug
Wednesday Reality: Engineering Begins Where Reality Refuses to Cooperate
Engineering begins with an acceptance that reality imposes conditions the designer does not control.
11 min read
11
Aug
Monday Myth: Small Teams Move Faster
In 1989, Volvo opened a car factory at Uddevalla on Sweden's west coast that looked strangely unlike the factories which had come to define twentieth-century manufacturing.
12 min read
08
Aug
Friday Fun: The KPI Wildlife Reserve
The Reserve boasted one of the richest concentrations of corporate wildlife ever documented. Decades of careful conservation had produced an ecosystem of extraordinary diversity, where every important metric enjoyed legal protection regardless of its relationship with the surrounding environment.
3 min read
06
Aug
The Humility of Reliable Systems
Reality has never cared how confident the system felt before the lights went out.
8 min read
04
Aug
Monday Myth: Performance Comes from Power
True Engineers rarely optimise machines because they admire elegance. They optimise economics.
4 min read