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A couple weeks ago I read and reviewed Bob Pozen's Extreme Productivity, which turned my attention to some excellent concepts and strategies for streamlining day-to-day operations. It's important to give attention to the more pragmatic side of operational improvement, an area in which Pozen has demonstrated excellence. I picked up this idea of improvement at a point where Extreme Productivity leaves off, with a consideration of something author and consultant Karen Martin discusses in her recent book, The Outstanding Organization.
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There are few things worse than the feeling that you're getting very little done with the seemingly ample time you have. There are a handful of potential contributors to this feeling (including derangement), but most often we feel unproductive because we are in fact unproductive. In this case, what would help is a guide to increasing productivity, which is exactly what Robert Pozen has created with Extreme Productivity.
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My 3-year-old daughter will only tolerate a certain ratio of words to pictures. Generally the pictures win the war for her attention. Looking at the popularity and apparent effectiveness of infographics, adults actually like pictures too (I certainly do).
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It's the morning after 9/11, eleven years later.
As I sat down to write this post yesterday, I began typing up a description of four commercial airplanes hijacked by religious zealots and flown into the heart of the American establishment: two hitting a set of twin towers in the middle of the country's financial district, which when built were the tallest on Earth; another crashing into a five-sided office building—still the largest on Earth by sheer floor area—that housed the nerve center of the mightiest military the world has ever known; and one that was brought down in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania before it could reach it's final target, believed to be either the White House or the U. S.
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Politicians and the punditry across the country are making a good living discussing America's decline, but no one seems to be doing very much about it other than asking people to "vote for me" or "listen to me. " It seems like every time we turn to the news, it's the same story with a different punchline, usually dictated by what side of the political divide the speaker is coming from.
Robert Atkinson and Stephen Ezell's new book, Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage, is a welcome, wonkish 440 page respite.
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