REWORK

Any new management book you open, you will find that authors refute the established principles of management and advocate new method or viewpoint in tackling management problems. However, if you examine the meaning of the message or hypothesis, you often find that the same old rules are presented in different form emphasizing a particular aspect.

When I heard from my nephew, Manish Ranade (Software engineer in Yahoo and the one who started his career with our Dnyandeep), that REWORK is a new revolutionary book on management and I must read it, I had the same presumption. But when I read the book, I found it radically different in message as well as presentation. The book is written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, who are founders of 37signals.com, a successful company with small workforce. They have given their secrets of success in this book.

The cover showed crumbled papers indicating frustration of using established management principles. There is a severe and straight forward attack on the popular and accepted methods of working, with point by point reasoning to expose the drawbacks and pitfalls in them. The presentation is concise with a picture to give strong message for each chapter.

Workaholism – The book starts with exposure of popular myth of late night working as effective way of working. Now a days, it has become a matter of prestige in many organizations, to work late night. People take pride and believe sincerely that they can do the job better if they work overnight for long hours at a stretch and keep struggling to get solution. Authors call it as addiction to wrong habit. They have rightly shown that in reality, working at night does not prove to be beneficial or more efficient than normal working.

Overworking simply creates intellectual laziness and mere brute force cannot solve the problem. You must have fresh mind to solve tricky problem or understand complex situation. results in inelegant solutions.

I entirely agree with authors. In our firm also people work late at night. It started when we took foreign project assignments and it was necessary to work at night for contacting foreign clients. However, habit of late night working continued and became way of working for all staff irrespective of necessity. This has disrupted their normal working cycle and routine office timing also creating communication problems for domestic clients. I hope that by reading the book, they will try to get rid of this habit and shift to normal routine unless conditions demand otherwise on some days.

Meetings are toxic – Meetings are considered as essential and effective for monitoring of the work, group discussion and planning for future action plan. Authors have pointed out many drawbacks in holding regular meetings. Waste of time, weak agenda, diversion of topic, unprepared ness of participants and no concrete outcome. I do not agree with authors on this point. No doubt, earlier meetings in our company were shrouded with such pit falls, I do not think, it proves ineffectiveness of meetings but cautions against bad meetings.

In my view, meetings give a unified approach and opportunity to find the problems faced by individual members and those created by improper communication between members. My earlier blog on Successful management by Teleconference shows the benefits of such meeting. The suggestions made by authors should be incorporated as regards the effective planning and conducting meetings.

I reiterate the points for good meeting in author’s words
• Set a timer. When it rings, meeting’s over.
• Invite as few people as possible.
• Always have a clear agenda.
• Begin with a specific problem.
• Meet at the site of the problem instead of a conference room. Point to real things and suggest real changes.
• End with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it.

Pick a fight – Authors have shown that if companies take aggressive fight with opponents in advertisements, people get attracted and choose side. They become passionate, which helps in creating fans of your product or service. You can create opponent with your own earlier product also and show superiority of new one. This strategy is based on mob mentality and general interest of people in fight, sport or competition, where they can participate and enjoy in winning.

Planning is guessing – Authors are against long- term business planning. They equate it with fortune telling. According to them business and controlling environment are too complex and ever changing that makes planning a futile exercise. They cautioned that long term plans may bind the actions not appropriate with current situation. Instead, they advise flexible short term plan which is well definable and under control.

Underdo your competition- Instead of over preparation and spending to win over competition, authors advise to do less than your competitors and save on cost, make it more simple than more complex. They give example of bicycle and flip camera to show that simple design has retained its popularity in spite of many fancy modifications in design.

I liked the book and agreed to many points, but felt that they can be made supplemental and corrective rather than total denial of accepted methods of management. I recommend it for developing practical, adequate and effective methods of working under changing business scenario.