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Sanctified Common Sense is Big Business
Christian doctor, Patrick Dixon, has become one of the most important influences for many large companies around the world. He is known as a 'futurologist'. In practice he has wisdom! He researches well, has loads of common sense and he prays a lot. In this way he discerns the essence of what is happening now and what will develop from it. He is then able to help 'big business' to match their financial objectives with care for people - and often save a lot of money at the same time. Recent clients include Arthur Anderson, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and United Nations. See his amazing web site at www.globalchange.com (4.5M 'hits' a year!)
Here is an example of Patrick's prayerful common sense:
A senior executive thinks at around 10,000 words a minute (a picture is worth a thousand words), and scans a newspaper at 5,000 words a minute. He or she speaks at around 100 words per minute on the phone to a client, and yet can type only perhaps 15 words per minute.
What is the point of spending a fortune on new computer systems for people who cannot even type? The single most important technology tool for increasing productivity may be a typing course, and executives whose typing speed grows in three weeks from 20 to 40 words per minute will literally double their output.
People say that it is quality not volume that counts and that speed will not increase quality. This is nonsense. If I phone an investment adviser I expect 100 words per minute of pure gold: world class advice at normal talking speed. Therefore his brain is capable of thinking new messages at that speed.
But listening on the phone is very inefficient for me. I only get 100 words a minute from my adviser. I would prefer a 1,000 word e-mail which will take me less than a minute to read. That's a ten-fold increase in my own productivity. But if my advisor can only type 20 words a minute, my own increase in productivity is at the cost of a five fold decrease in his own productivity, because it will take him at least five times as long to write in an e-mail what he would have said on the phone.
The lesson is that e-mail works and the phone does not. Phone calls are very inefficient. The phone is a hundred year old invention that has not changed in any way whatever, except in cost, and the fact that I don't need a wire to the exchange. Trying to get two people together in a phone call is increasingly difficult in a busy, global world where chances are the person in another country is not even awake when you are wanting to chat.
So then, at the very least you should assess typing speeds of all new executive recruits, offering courses to all who need them.
So then, attend to the basics and the fundamentals of human life when installing technology and you will transform your organisation with minimum cost.
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