Ronn said: > and an unlimited budget for making those changes, e.g., remodeling or > building a new building, purchasing additional tools/equipment, etc.?
I can see that I'm going to have to constrain this more. Suppose you're given the same budget for operations as the place you currently work and also enough money to build, furnish and equip new buildings that are roughly as expensive as the ones you're currently working in, and you are given the mandate to set up a group, faculty or company to do the same things that your current place of work is doing - how would you do things differently? > How about the ability to change policies mandated by government or > other external entities? I don't think this is within the scope of the changes that I'd allow. > Define "more productive". Frex, must it be something quantifiable that > must show up on the bottom line, or can it be something intangible > that will not necessarily bring in any more money or cut expenses? The situation I've been considering as my baseline example is a software company. The definition of "more productive" would then be the production of software at higher rates, with fewer bugs, and at lower cost. In the more general case there would obviously be different definitions of "more productive", but they all come down to doing the core of one's job more effectively. I suppose in academia, that would mean improving some mixture of teaching undergraduates, supervising grad students, producing widely cited papers and so on. > What about when "happier" and "more productive" are in direct conflict > with each other? I'm making the assumption that I'm dealing with "knowledge workers" or other creative types who are notoriously hard to motivate by putting them under more pressure. In that case, it seems reasonable to me that all else being equal they will be more productive when they find satisfaction and happiness in their work, and will be less productive when they find work annoying or tedious. > As long as I'm being realistic in my expectations (You wouldn't happen > to want to donate funds for an observatory, a planetarium, and a > supercomputing center, plus incidentals, would you? And maybe a TA to > grade papers?) Not till I'm a billionaire. > I asked some of these questions to see just how far you wanted the > speculation to go. It might be interesting to talk about the development of new technologies that will improve productivity too, as long as those technologies are things that could be brought to market quite soon. Rich, who must admit that he is thinking about starting a software company and is looking for good ideas to help him in his quest to make it a good place to work and an economic success.
