Personal productivity

Jim Collins is all about discipline. The man who described Level 5 Leadership not only understands the inner fortitude of the best-performing companies and leaders; he’s famously disciplined and enormously productive, as you can tell from his website (jimcollins.com). A runner and mountain-climber, he is the picture of fitness. How does he manage his time? […]

An analysis of 400 case studies uncovers several ways to solve the world’s infrastructure challenges more efficiently.

It's just too gratifying.

When productivity is a problem in manufacturing, managers turn to the R&D department or operations for help. In services, however, especially ones where there is a lot of contact with the customer, such in-house groups cannot by themselves improve productivity. Because services involve the customer in production, are labor intensive, and are time-bound, consumer behavior […]

Regain control of your schedule.

Think twice about who should be invited.

How to approach your responsibilities—and your career—in an understaffed unit by Paul Michelman

Workarounds honed through trial and error.

I am on a plane with my wife Eleanor as we fly back from our once-a-year-without-children vacation. It was, for us, the perfect week. After years of planning...

If the CEO sits in the hot seat, the CFO’s chair is positively smoking. According to analysis conducted by the CFO Executive Board, annual CFO turnover at the largest 162 global companies between 1995 and 2003 was 17%—even higher than for CEOs—and three out of four current Fortune 500 finance officers have been in their […]

The easiest way to increase the productivity of people working on computers is to increase the size of their monitors. I recently suggested that a firm add an additional screen for all its customer service workers and you can see below that in a month’s time, the time per call decreased from about three minutes […]

by Lynda Cardwell

Increases in productivity far outweigh the costs.

The primitive, emotional parts of our brains have a powerful influence on the choices we make. Now, neuroscientists are mapping the risk and reward systems in the brain that drive our best—and worst—decision making.

Before you rush to hire more people, try these three steps.

Think of it as a common language for distributed teams.

One spring morning a few years back, I went from being a healthy middle-aged guy to a healthy middle-aged guy with type 2 diabetes in the blink of a blood test. The news came out of the blue — I’m thin, active, eat a pretty decent diet, don’t smoke, and there’s no diabetes in my […]

What are those challenging moments that have tested you, but also reveal who you are? You may discover your sense of purpose by revisiting your past.

When they cut R&D, underinvest in their brands, and--worse--cut worker and middle management ranks, leaders are merely punishing their employees (and...

Understanding why you put off certain tasks.