High Output Management

The informed use of e-mail—short for computer-to-computer electronic messaging—results in two fundamentally simple but startling implications. It turns days into minutes, and the originator of a message can reach dozens or more of his or her co-workers with the same effort it takes to reach just one. As a result, if your organization uses e-mail, a lot more people know what’s going on in your business than did before, and they know it a lot faster than they used to.

Location 111

All managers in such companies need to adapt to the new environment. What are the rules of the new environment? First, everything happens faster. Second, anything that can be done will be done, if not by you, then by someone else. Let there be no misunderstanding: These changes lead to a less kind, less gentle, and less predictable workplace. Again, as a manager in such a workplace, you need to develop a higher tolerance for disorder. Now, you should still not accept disorder. In fact, you should do your best to drive what’s around you to order. The breakfast factory metaphor of this book—the idea that you should run your managerial processes like a well-oiled factory—is every bit as much the ideal now as it was when I wrote this book. But you as a manager need to be mentally and emotionally ready to be tossed into the turbulence generated by a mega-merger that takes place in your industry—perhaps in this country, perhaps on the other side of the globe. You should be prepared for the shockwaves engendered by a brand-new technique pioneered by someone you had never even heard of before. You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double your efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I’m advocating is “Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.”

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We must recognize that no amount of formal planning can anticipate changes such as globalization and the information revolution we’ve referred to above. Does that mean that you shouldn’t plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.

Location 191