Charles Fishman has a wonderful article on a aircraft engine manufacture plant in Durham, NC. There are a lot of interesting lessons in here about teamwork, motivation, and work that make it a highly recommended read.
I’m supposed to be packing up the house and instead just read that.
Update:Jon supplied a link to a Joel Spolsky article counterpointing the above article. Now I’m going to be reading that instead of doing some chores.
Hi Ben,
Joel Spolsky read this exact same article and applied it to Fog Creek Software, and ran into some problems, which appear to be the flipside of the system described in Durham.
Read more about it:
How I learned to love middle managers
Just thought you’d find a great “balancing” point of view, and one that references precisely to the article at hand. 🙂