Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less

The mantra of the Work the System method is to isolate-fix-maintain. It is not enough to know what to do. One must take action.

So, through the astute leader’s observation, a problem calls for a subsystem modification. The leader makes the permanent improvement, causing the entire system to be incrementally more robust and reliable than before the problem occurred. Addressing the problem, and then taking this second step to fix the cause of the problem, distinguishes the pe

The pathway to control—to eliminating chaos—is to discover, examine, optimize, and then manage your mechanical and biological systems. The dictionary’s definition of system is “a group

What is the most important difference between the manager of a large successful business and the manager of a small struggling business? The first manages systems; the second copes with bad results.

The focus must be on the proactive management of systems, not on coping with random system results.

Your job is not to be a fire-killer. Your job is to prevent fires. Of course, in daily life you will always encounter fire-killing, but the idea is to minimize it.

getting things right most of the time is good enough. The part that doesn’t come out well is just part of the overhead: the cost of doing business, of taking risks, of external confusion, of coping with a changing world that is sometimes one step ahead of your best efforts, of being alive.

At best, a system combines efforts with other systems to help us reach desired targets. At worst, an errant component within a system creates problems that manifest themselves chaotically, chronically, and often subversively, contributing to the feeling that one is not in proper control of one’s life. That out-of-control feeling is not rare: Many p

First, I would create the Strategic Objective, which would define us and set goals. Second, I would put together the General Operating Principles, which would serve as our guidelines for making decisions. Third, we would write out our Working Procedures, which would exactly define every recurring process of the business.