Slack |
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26 August 2025 - Erlenbach
People have been recommending Tom Demarco's Slack to me for several years now, although the book is a quarter century old. This Summer I fnally took the time to read it, and I was not disappointed. It's really amazing that after all these years I still see businesses making the same mistakes he describes them making during the last century. Probably because leadership skills are still something people who are good at other things are expected to have when they're promoted to positions where they manage people.
DeMarco breaks his argument and prescription down into four sections. In the first he introduces the idea of slack time and why corporations have sought to eliminate it as "waste". In the second he argues that the lack of slack time kills innovation and causes enterprises to ossify as they seek to do the thing they were doing last year ever more efficiently. In the third part he demostrates how slack time facilitates learning and change. And in the last section he discusses living with risk.
Throughout the book DeMarco uses example anitpatterns that are unfortunately common business to demostrate how adding slack time can remedy them. As a manager or khowledge worker this book can really save time spotting these antipatterns and provides good arguments on how to fix them, or unfortunately, escape them instead of going down with the ship. So I wholeheartedly pass on the recommendations give to me to you, dear reader.
