Article

Burnout, Organizational Slack, and IT Capability

Posted January 1, 2003 | Leadership | Cutter Benchmark Review

At the US automaker where I once worked, assembly plant shifts were scheduled back to back. If one shift finished at 3:00 pm, another was hard at work by 3:30. The plants' managers pushed hard to meet production quotas while minimizing input costs by keeping the line going pretty much all the time. The underlying productivity arithmetic is basic to any manager's: maximize output (cars), minimize inputs (labor, electricity to run the machines, etc.).

About The Author
Robert Austin
Robert D. Austin is a Cutter Consortium Fellow and a member of Arthur D. Little's AMP open consulting network. He is a regular speaker at the annual Cutter Summit and often delivers Cutter Bootcamps. Dr. Austin served as a professor on the faculty at Harvard Business School for more than a decade, and then as Professor of Management of Innovation & Digital Transformation at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. He is currently Professor… Read More
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