Jack be nimble ...

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES wrap up - Editorial

THERE'S A KID IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD, a Younger friend of my son Ry. who is one of the neatest kids you'd ever meet. Cute as a button. high energy, always on the go and in any given year he sports a cast on his wrist or arm that never seems to slow him down one bit. His name is Jack, and I'm pretty sure his picture should accompany the entry "Kid" in the encyclopedia.

Just to give you an idea of his general nature. the following is an exchange he had with my son. 5 years his senior, on one of Jack's many doorbell visits to our porch:

Jack: "Hey. RY. you wanna play?"

Ry: "Can't . I'm leaving for a baseball game in two minutes."

Jack: "Wanna play for two minutes?"

No disappointment . All Jack saw was the opportunity. no matter how small. Even though he's still in elementary school. I want to hire, Jack to be a business coach, His job aside. of course. from going to school is playing, and he embraces it with every ounce of his being. Jack doesn't view himself as a metaphor, but sure do. I wish more people especially businesspeople were like him.

The issue here is one of productivity. and in my research about business productivity I can see that businesses themselves, businesspeople. and people who work for organizations all concern themselves with productivity. In fact, productivity seems to he at a premium these days as companies have pared workforces. and all of us are at least trying to do more things at work with fewer resources.

I found an organization called I4cp the Institute for Corporate Productivity and in reading through a bunch of the literature and whine papers I found a lot of the usual academic-research-sounding but empty mumbo-jumbo about Strategy. Leadership. Culture and Communications. This all sounded like the stuff that I HR people put together for corporate team-building retreats mid seminars that. I believe. simply baffle and bore most people and make them less productive. This is mostly because. since such events are put on by company leadership. they glorify the current leadership when in my experience that is the area that needs the most work. In other words. it's hard to improve productivity by imploring people to be better "followers." They'd be better and more productive without the seminar if they had better leadership. It's rare for a manager to identify himself or herself as the...