Last week I promised more on hard-smart work, the way to defeating our personal biases that create our blind spots. So here is a link to an excerpt from my book DECIDE How to Manage the Risk in Your Decision Making, a 5-minute read which tells the story of the invention of the Linotype machine and the power of hard-smart work.
For those with 2,500 emails pending in your inbox (you know who you are!), here is a quick summary of the excerpt:
The invention that epitomises the benefits of hard-smart work is the Linotype machine that allowed faster production of newspapers so they turned from a handful of pages into the tombs of the 20th century. It was invented in the 1880s and was being used at the New York Times until the 1970s before early versions of today’s digital printing took over.
The secret was a combination of a journalist, a mechanic and a watchmaker. The journalist had the knowledge, connections and the money to understand and deliver on the opportunity. The mechanic had the ability to design the working parts and build machines. The watchmaker had insight into the design of complex mechanical systems. Together they beat the competition.
To do the hard-smart work you need to think about the members of your team that can identify and deliver the opportunity, the technical people who can do the hard design work and the people that provide the insight, the ones that can see through complexity.
You know you want to do the hard-smart work. So go and do it and tell me what you have done and how successful it has been. Please!
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