In modern knowledge work, we’ve largely lost interest in moving boldly ahead, embracing the resulting hardships as the cost of doing business better than before. We still talk about “innovation,” but this term now applies almost exclusively to the products and services we offer, not the means by which we produce them. When it comes to the latter topic, business thinkers tend to focus on secondary factors, like better leadership or clearer objectives to help stimulate productivity. Little attention is dedicated to the actual mechanics of how work is assigned, executed, and reviewed.
