GTD Business Case

[dkhouri2]

What information do you have on a business case for GTD. I am looking for some supporting data. For exmaple,

• People have more information to deal with today
• On average, people can save x hours / day by working more efficiently
• It takes people x minutes to find something they have filed

or any similar statistics to that. Would love to hear people's thinking on this.

Thank you,

 

[Cpu_Modern]

• People have more information to deal with today

This is not only a quantitative point but also a qualitative issue. The "stuff" your average knowledge worker encounters is so much in our time (contrary to like it was in the 50s last century), that she cannot deal with it all. She has to process. In past times (not that I was there) it seemed to be the case that you just took on every job your boss had for you - there was not that much. Well, I don't want to suggest people weren't hard working then, but in some way the possibilities of what they could engage in where more limited, so they constantly arrived at the "do" phase.

A complete other issue is this of creativity and the natural planning model. I suggest do some research on LEAN management and how companies liek Toyota created their success stories based on the constant creative input of their staff.

 

[kewms]

This is not only a quantitative point but also a qualitative issue. The "stuff" your average knowledge worker encounters is so much in our time (contrary to like it was in the 50s last century), that she cannot deal with it all. She has to process. In past times (not that I was there) it seemed to be the case that you just took on every job your boss had for you - there was not that much. Well, I don't want to suggest people weren't hard working then, but in some way the possibilities of what they could engage in where more limited, so they constantly arrived at the "do" phase.

If you read the diaries of various high-level knowledge workers throughout history, you'll find that most of them were pretty busy people. The head of a Renaissance workshop would have spent enormous amounts of time negotiating with patrons, planning large projects, and dividing work among his assistants, and only a limited amount of time actually painting.

The difference is that so many sub-managerial jobs now require significant original and independent thinking. If you are a knowledge worker, there's a good chance that your boss *can't* give you more than general guidance. It isn't that being a knowledge worker has become more difficult, it is that knowledge work is more widespread than ever before.

Katherine