Hacking Work
Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results
By: Bill Jensen, Josh Klein
Published: September 23, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 224pp
ISBN-13: 9781591843573
ISBN-10: 159184357X
Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin
"Once employees know how to hack their work, everything's up for grabs - How we work, when and where we work, how we define effectiveness and success... Everything", write change agents and institutional hackers Bill Jansen and Josh Klein, in their revolutionary and change facilitating book Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results. The authors describe how today's employees, frustrated with outdated work systems and processes, antiquated technology, and fossilized bureaucracies, are taking the initiative to become change agents in their own organizations.
Bill Jensen (photo left) and Josh Klein recognize that employees want to do their jobs better and more effectively. They also recognize that those same workers are stifled and even blocked from getting their jobs done by procedural rules that were designed for a much different time, and for circumstances with little relationship to current economic, industry, or market conditions. As a result, the best and most effective employees are creating workarounds for inefficient technology, ignoring ancient operations manuals, and even creating their own tools and techniques. In effect, these modern workers are hacking their own workplace in the interest providing the best service for the customers and building the organization. In effect, they are saving the company from itself by jettisoning what no longer works, and replacing those rules with fresh thinking and concepts.
Josh Klein (photo left) and Bill Jensen understand that there are different types of hackers. They range from the good helpful white hats, through the more vague gray hats, to the malicious black hats. The authors provide the tools and techniques to become a white hat hacker who works toward the betterment of the company and its stakeholders. They demonstrate how acting as a change agent who replaces outmoded systems with tools and processes that streamline production create stronger companies. At the same time, frustrated people gain more job satisfaction by removing illogical obstacles that slow down and even halt operations. The authors also point more ominously to how employees must become hackers and change agents to preserve their jobs, as failure to achieve results will result in the workers being thrown under the bus. The irony of the situation is the best employees, who create innovative solutions to long standing problems, find themselves out of work. Taking change into one's own hands not only saves jobs but may save the organization itself.
For me, the power of the book is how Bill Jensen and Josh Klein make a compelling case for becoming a workplace hacker and change agent. The authors provide the techniques and logic for turning what no longer works upside down, and replacing those horse and buggy procedures with new and efficient modes of action. Not only do the authors share the how of creating positive change within an organization, but also describe why that change is essential for both the workers and the company. At the same time, the book contains a strong pro-ethical behavior bias to ensure that the actions taken by employees are to the benefit of the other staff members, the various stakeholders, and the organization itself. When a company begins to understand that its work rules, systems, and standard operating procedures are hampering the flow of work, then a process of overall change can take place. Overall, the book creates a mindset of transforming the organization and its systems into ones that benefit the employees and customers, instead of standing in their way as roadblocks.
I highly recommend the thought provoking and worldview altering book Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein, to anyone in organizations who is frustrated by outdated procedures and red tape, and who holds a genuine desire to create a more efficient and effective organization for everyone. This book is a powerful change manifesto for anyone who seeks a better way of doing things, and demands to be freed of the shackles that create only frustration and high employee job dissatisfaction.
Read the inspirational and change facilitating book Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein, and become the person who instigates effective and lasting change in your own organization. It's time to take matters into your own hands, and hack your work. The company, the employees, and all of the stakeholders will be better off as a result.
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