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02
Aug
Friday Fun: The Committee That Replaced the Thermometer

Friday Fun: The Committee That Replaced the Thermometer

The first industrial revolution did not merely require bigger machines. It required machines that behaved predictably. Steam engines demanded repeatable boiler pressures. Steel mills demanded consistent furnace temperatures.
4 min read
30
Jul
Wednesday Reality :The Assembly Line Does not Care Who Worked Hardest

Wednesday Reality :The Assembly Line Does not Care Who Worked Hardest

Systems possess no mechanism for rewarding effort. They reveal only what successfully passes through them.
4 min read
28
Jul
Monday Myth: "Our Application Is Complex"

Monday Myth: "Our Application Is Complex"

Perhaps software never suffered from an unusual abundance of complexity. Perhaps it suffered from an unusual willingness to admire it.
6 min read
26
Jul
Friday Fun: The Corporate Weather Office

Friday Fun: The Corporate Weather Office

The Corporate Weather Office occupied the fourth floor of the Ministry because weather had, over time, acquired considerable strategic importance.
4 min read
23
Jul
Wednesday Reality: Control Has Mass

Wednesday Reality: Control Has Mass

Modern organisations rather than improving the architecture of work, increase the number of people watching it.
9 min read
21
Jul
Monday Myth: Standardisation Kills Innovation

Monday Myth: Standardisation Kills Innovation

Standardisation therefore functions less as a constraint than as infrastructure. Like roads, railways or electrical grids, it rarely attracts admiration once established because its greatest achievement lies in becoming invisible.
8 min read
19
Jul
Friday Fun: The Office Escape Room

Friday Fun: The Office Escape Room

Long before escape rooms became fashionable corporate team-building exercises, engineers, locksmiths and craftsmen had been designing mechanical puzzle boxes whose sole purpose was to challenge the human mind
3 min read
16
Jul
Wednesday Reality: Engineering Begins Where Certainty Ends

Wednesday Reality: Engineering Begins Where Certainty Ends

Neither the Royal Navy nor NASA expected reality to honour their plans. Charts remained incomplete. Weather changed without warning. Equipment failed. Calculations drifted. Human judgement remained imperfect.
4 min read
13
Jul
Monday Myth: Great Organisations Feel Dynamic

Monday Myth: Great Organisations Feel Dynamic

The highest compliment a passenger can give aviation is that nothing memorable happened. Perhaps the highest compliment customers can give an engineering organisation is exactly the same.
5 min read
12
Jul
Friday Fun: The Corporate Airport

Friday Fun: The Corporate Airport

Many organisations, however, quietly make that mistake, becoming exceptionally good at refining coordination, governance and process while gradually forgetting that these things exist only to support delivery
5 min read