Product Description

If your company’s goal is to become fast, responsive, and agile, more efficiency is not the answer--you need more slack.

Why is it that today’s superefficient organizations are ailing? Tom DeMarco, a leading management consultant to both Fortune 500 and up-and-coming companies, reveals a counterintuitive principle that explains why efficiency efforts can slow a company down. That principle is the value of slack, the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change. Implementing slack could be as simple as adding an assistant to a department and letting high-priced talent spend less time at the photocopier and more time making key decisions, or it could mean designing workloads that allow people room to think, innovate, and reinvent themselves. It means embracing risk, eliminating fear, and knowing when to go slow. Slack allows for change, fosters creativity, promotes quality, and, above all, produces growth.

With an approach that works for new- and old-economy companies alike, this revolutionary handbook debunks commonly held assumptions about real-world management, and gives you and your company a brand-new model for achieving and maintaining true effectiveness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30112 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-09
• Released on: 2002-04-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.com
Another entry in the small but growing management library that suggests purposely slowing down and smelling the roses could actually boost productivity in today's 24/7 world, Tom DeMarco's Slack stands out because it is aimed at "the infernal busyness of the modern workplace." DeMarco writes, "Organizations sometimes become obsessed with efficiency and make themselves so busy that responsiveness and net effectiveness suffer." By intentionally creating downtime, or "slack," management will find a much-needed opportunity to build a "capacity to change" into an otherwise strained enterprise that will help companies respond more successfully to constantly evolving conditions. Focusing specifically on knowledge workers and the environment in which they toil, DeMarco addresses the corporate stress that results from going full-tilt, and offers remedies he thinks will foster growth instead of stagnation. Slack, he contends, is just the thing to nurture the out-of-box thinking required in the 21st century, and within these pages, he makes a strong case for it. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
DeMarco (Peopleware), a management consultant, says that in today's competitive, fast-moving economy, managers work far less effectively than before. Responding to restructuring and staff reductions, managers overemphasize deadlines and rush employees, sacrificing quality. Instead, says DeMarco, executives should encourage teamwork, discourage competition and allow training time. Unfortunately, tedious, jargon-heavy writing dulls DeMarco's worthwhile message.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
International consultant DeMarco (Peopleware) presents his views on how corporations can become more effective. He states that in an age of acceleration, in which more work is crammed into less time, knowledge workers need slack time for reinvention, creativity, and growth. Slack time here is defined as "zero percent busy" and knowledge work is "think-intensive." The author offers his philosophy to all levels of management and gets to the core of what he thinks is wrong with today's modern corporations. Some of the problems he addresses include operating with meager staff, extended overtime, and unnecessary organizational meetings. His contention is that too many meetings take away from normal workday hours and create a need for managers and workers alike to incur overtime. While his views may sound innovative, they appear to be unrealistic and provide little direction for management trying to figure out how to keep with the competition. A marginal purchase for public libraries with business collections. Bellinda Wise, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Bedtime essential reading for anyone who works in a delivery focused company.
Look around, do you notice how certain people get work done (and done well), hit deadlines and still have time to chat at the water cooler. These are the most valued people in any organisation. The 20% people out of the 20/70/10 rule, when given 'slack', over produce, everytime. This book explains how they can do this.

Read this book, it will only take a few hours; which includes long pauses for "hmmm" and chin scratching moments. You'll be glad you did. Then implement what you've learned.

Sound Advice
What's in your workplace?
Efficiency or flexibility?
Tom does a fine job reminding us of the difference.

Indispensable Pithy Swath Through the Process Jungle
I agree that this is simultaneously a great screed on the inanity of most corporate management, and also a powerful indictment of the tendency of IT management to just go along, accepting a premise that is false and on most projects, is life-threatening.

I totally disagree with the one bad reviewer who claims the book is below the bar of even anecdotal, and boring. On the contrary, much of what is argued here is a logical, or purely rhetorical position, but that is the part that is the most refreshing! Whereas Peopleware may be more comprehensive, it is also less bold and rhetorically less daring. I love to see someone like DeMarco, who has proven all he needs to, instead of just churn out another episode in his established realm, provoke, argue, and show the amount of passion this book contains. Only someone who considers rhetoric sinful could find this book boring.

That said, this book is also not from left field: it owes a lot to Lean, et al, on the biz and IT process side, and it is also of a piece with other writings like Mythical Man Month. Personally, I think the most important thing about this book is that it is original in its approach and size, etc.: computer science, folks, is not a science, and the fact that it has been controlled by science people all these years, is one of the reasons it has denied many of the hugely important aspects of its reality, e.g. psychology, sociology, etc. We desperately need more books like this that are broadly rhetorical, small, quick reads, that can penetrate into the more densely forested parts of the realm.