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Slack
(explaining the difference between
business and busyness)
Published by Random House
Order from Dorset
House.
Download an introductory chapter
Early
Praise for Slack:
• Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News
columnist:
"During the rise of the so-called ÔNew Economy,Õ too many business
books reflected the same crazy logic that marked countless dot-con-game
business plans. In other words, common sense disappeared. Tom DeMarco's
volume is refreshing because it starts with common sense and goes from
there."
• David Kaplan, author of The Silicon
Boys and Their Valley of Dreams:
"This book is the ideal tonic to the '90s craze of down-sizing restructuring,
cost-cutting Ñ all in the name of efficiency and global competition.
What DeMarco shows is that the resulting costs in human capital (stress,
pressure, over-commitment) may ultimately deprive an organization of
the very success it seeks. DeMarco's remedy is what he calls Ôslack.Õ
Read this book and learn why."
• David Liddle,
General Partner, U.S. Venture Partners:
"DeMarco understands the temptations we all experience in the high-pressure
management world, and is able to separate incentives from accomplishments
and process from culture in a clear and memorable way. Buy this book
for your CEO or your favorite entrepreneur, or better still buy a copy
for yourself and profit from DeMarco's insights."
• Bob Metcalfe, inventor of ethernet,
founder of 3Com, author of Internet Collapses
"DeMarco puts his finger on something I'd only vaguely felt during
my years in Silicon Valley. When asked to cut people some slack, I knew
something was amiss, but not exactly what. Reading this tight little
book clears up the trade-offs between efficiency and effectiveness,
between doing and planning, between switching and concentration, and
shows how squeezing excess capacity out of your company can sometimes
leave it terminally unresponsive."
• Michael Schrage, MIT Media Lab, author
of Serious Play:
"Tom DeMarco's insights are shockingly pragmatic. Where other writers
aspire to be Machiavellis of management, he is a Montaigne: pithy, sharp,
intimate and wise."
• David Weinberger,
author of The Cluetrain Manifesto:
"Tom DeMarco goes after one of the most pervasive and pernicious myths
of business -- that humans are efficient the same way machines are.
This book will change the way you manage and understand your business."
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