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By: Robert F. Abbott When Phil hires a new helper for one of his construction projects, he first watches to see whether or not the newcomer has the right attitudes and habits to keep him as an employee. And, if the newcomer meets expectations,' Phil introduces him to his philosophy about work by telling him the woodcutters story. Two woodcutters who are working together for the first time, set off in the morning to cut down trees. One woodcutter works very hard, and aside from a couple of breaks, works steadily all day. The other woodcutter, though, seems to take many more breaks, at least one every hour. So the first woodcutter expects he'll have cut down many more trees by the end of the day. But, when they quit for the day, the first woodcutter finds, to his surprise, that the second woodcutter has done more, despite taking all those breaks. And, in his frustration, the first woodcutter wonders out loud how the second woodcutter did it. The second woodcutter couldn't help but hear the first woodcutter's question, and replies, 'Yes, I take many more breaks, but every time I take one, I sharpen my axe.' Phil uses this story of the woodcutters to explain his ideas about productivity, and he doesn't relate it to the productivity which economists refer to in their statistics. Phil thinks of productivity in a very immediate way: how many nails you can drive in one hour, for example. The economists are talking about the same thing, only they're talking about it as the sum of many millions of businesses and organizations, so they're talking about productivity in an abstract way. Whatever the case, productivity simply refers to the amount of value you can get from labor, land, or capital (invested money). As we'll see in the next section, Phil's income goes up when he (and his helper’s) productivity goes up. Increasing productivity across a whole nation is also good news. It means everyone in society becomes more prosperous, that everyone (or almost everyone) will have more money to spend or save. Increased productivity can also mean lower prices. For example, if carpenters and home building companies increase their productivity, then house prices will go down. Generally speaking, though, consumers, owners of businesses, and workers in those businesses all share productivity gains. And what about people without job? Well they often gain, too, because when businesses owners and workers make more, they pay more in taxes. In turn, that makes more money available to governments for social programs. Having heard all that, you may be skeptical, thinking your prosperity hasn't gone up much, if at all. But you'd be wrong. Productivity has gone up, and gone up a lot over the past two hundred years, and especially over the past 50 years. It may be invisible to most of us, but productivity is one of the silver bullets that have given us our prosperity and so many of our choices.
Recent surveys indicate that while cloud computing is a top priority for Canadian CIOs, assurance in cloud services remains the principle inhibitor for adoption. 2012 is proving to be the year of accelerating adoption as organizations gain a deeper appreciation of cloud services and how they can be adopted in a trusted manner. Join Ruth Morton, myself, and guest, John Weigelt, National Technology Officer for Microsoft Canada, as we explore the security and privacy considerations of Cloud Computing.
May 10, 2012 – 12:00 PM - 12:30 PM ET Featured Guest  John Weigelt As the National Technology Officer for Microsoft Canada, John Weigelt is responsible for driving Microsoft Canada’s strategic policy and technology efforts. In this role, Mr. Weigelt helps business and governments innovate with technology while avoiding the unintended consequences that might arise. He leads Canadian outreach for Economic Development, Environmental Sustainability, Accessibility, Privacy, Security, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Government 3.0, Interoperability and other policy related activities. Prior to joining Microsoft, John held the position of Senior Director of Architecture, Standards and Engineering at the Chief Information Officer Branch of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. John is also a board member for Supply Chain and Logistics Association Canada and is also a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Council of Innovacorp. He holds a Master’s Degree in computer and communications security engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada. About the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk series
About the AlignIT program for IT managers The AlignIT program is dedicated to keeping IT leaders informed about what matters in business and technology. We do that through in-person events, web casts, our blog, newsletter, the Tech Talk video series and the IT Manager audio podcast series among other things. You can find more information about the Align IT program at www.alignit.ca. If you have comments, suggestions, and ideas for future topics please let us know by connecting with us via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Visit the AlignIT site >> Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 |
More Articles:1. How to Keep a Good Employee: Look, Listen, Learn By Judy Ringer Recently a client told me a wonderful story about how a change of attitude helped her to keep a valued employee.Angry and grumbling about one of the provisions in the company policy, the employee asked for a private meeting with my client, the owner of a small sales company, and began to tell her in direct terms what was wrong. The client couldn't hear anything the employee was saying because she was too busy planning her own rebuttal strategy. It was important to let the employee know that th… Credit Card Offers 2. Assertiveness Techniques Help Control The Urges Of Emotions By M'Hamed Cherif During the development of the “Assertiveness Coffee Cards” we, at Cutesolutions, have thoroughly reviewed the literature on neuro-psychology to find out what recent discoveries say on assertiveness. Major strides have been made in unravelling the processes guiding our behaviour, in identifying the causes for a great number of cognitive disabilities and deepening understanding of the human traits. But, the brain is still far from giving away its secrets, though a lot has already been achieved … 3. Seven Reasons Organizational Culture Matters We spend 40 . . . or 45 . . . or 50 . . . or more hours at work each week. Many of us spend more time with those we work with than we do our families. For us to be content and fulfilled people, that time must be valuable for more than a dollar. . . We want to be engaged in our work. We yearn for work that is enjoyable, meaningful and engaging. When we are engaged we are safer on the job, more productive and more willing and able to delight Customers. It is for these basic reasons that organizati… 4. Weak link of lean manufacturing Certainly lean manufacturing is a very good system. It is very effective and efficient. Lean manufacturing concepts outscores almost all the conventional manufacturing concepts by large margins. Lean manufacturing is the system for future. Concept of waste elimination will be much more important in the future. With the population growth, depreciation of available resources, requirement for systems which can utilize the available resources efficiently. Apart from this, wastes in any form are tigh… |
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