Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Monday, June 30, 2008

Business Forward: The New Thinking On Stupidity

"Work smarter - not harder!" was the mantra of the new gurus of biz buzz back in the heyday of whenever that was for them. But that was then! Now, forward-thinking business heads are embracing newer ways for their own sake, and finding out that that changes all the rules.

Forget "work smarter - not harder!" By working dumber and faster, you end up creating more work for yourself and ultimately, you end up getting more work done. In today's business-minded workplace, getting more work done is the only name of the game in town.

Take my own example for instance. Several months ago, I hired a real moron for a key position. Now, I'm not going to claim I did it deliberately - but I did end up reaping some very unexpected results, and I learned a surprising lesson. Here's what happened. This person came across very on the ball in the interview, and seemed to be competent enough on the job. But it came out after the fact that all of their work was riddled with teeny tiny little errors that no one could possibly make. After they were fired, I had to go back through all of that and redo it myself - an enormous amount of work! I got more work done in the past two months than I ever have before.

When I looked back on it, and I realized that huge increase in productivity, a bell went on over my head and I began to examine how this new way of thinking could be applied across the board. Soon enough, with a few small adjustments to the way we approach things, my whole office is doing more work than ever before!

That's progress. That's results. This is how it works in today's new workplace. Lateral thinking, coming at an expected problem in an unexpected way, leads to unexpected results that you can then reap for all that they're worth. Today's business leaders know that the only paradigm...is change!

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