Ted Tuesday— Yves Morieux: How Too Many Rules At Work Keep You From Getting Things Done

"Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything."

Good Morning Folks,

Today I am sharing a great TED talk which shows that even having best people doesn't guarantee great results. More often than not, the team, able and willing go the extra mile will take the victory.

This talk very much reminded me of the advantage FSO has serving our clients as an outsourced partner. Being on the outside, looking in, we are not mired by the bureaucracy and internal politics that can impede teams from cooperating fully.

Modern work - from waiting tables to crunching numbers to dreaming up new products - is about solving brand-new problems every day, flexibly, in brand-new ways. But as Yves Morieux shows in this insightful talk, delivered at TED@Boston Consulting Group London and since viewed over a million times line— too often, an overload of processes and sign-offs and internal metrics keeps us from doing our best. He offers a new way to think of work - as a collaboration, not a competition.

Yves Morieux thinks deeply about what makes organizations work effectively. A senior partner in BCG’s Washington D.C. office and director of the BCG Institute for Organization, Morieux considers how overarching changes in structure can improve motivation for all who work there. His calls his approach "Smart Simplicity." Using six key rules, it encourages employees to cooperate in order to solve long-term problems. It isn’t just about reducing costs and increasing profit -- it’s about maximizing engagement through all levels of a company. Morieux has been featured in articles on organizational evolution in Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Le Monde.

Yves believes that our organizations are wasting human intelligence. They have turned against human efforts. When people don't cooperate, don't blame their mindsets, their mentalities, their personality -- look at the work situations. Is it really in their personal interest to cooperate or not, if, when they cooperate, they are individually worse off? Why would they cooperate? When we blame personalities instead of the clarity, the accountability, the measurement, we add injustice to ineffectiveness.

We need to create organizations in which it becomes individually useful for people to cooperate. Remove the interfaces, the middle offices -- all these complicated coordination structures. You, as leaders, as managers, are you making it individually useful for people to cooperate? The future of our organizations, our companies, our societies hinges on your answer to these questions.

Have a look:

Thanks to you for listening.

Have a GREAT Day,



Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer  

Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TED Tuesdays on MitchWeiner.com highlights some of today's most intriguing ideas. Look for more talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more— HERE.  

About FSO Onsite Outsourcing
Recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of the nation's fastest growing companies for the third consecutive year, and lead by industry pioneer, Mitch Weiner, FSO's growth and success can be attributed to making a positive and powerful impact on their clients' bottom lines, as well as their employees' careers and lives.