image: icons.mysitemyway

It is not so much a wonder that people hate IT,
it is a wonder organizations
still find people to take the abuse.”
— Kevin Wood

Or, more importantly, why we may run out of water. And yet, for every challenge mentioned in the piece I could think of a handful of struggling entrepreneurs who were working on a solution. Some are wacky, some imminently impractical, but some have a very real shot at changing the world for the better.

That’s a big part of what we hope Hacking Work will encourage people to do – innovate us all into a better place. It’s readily apparent that an individual can react more flexibly, act more courageously, and leverage their resources more effectively than a big company. At the same time, that same individual can benefit more directly from their contributions.

We may be facing a perfect storm of food and water shortages, but with a little luck and hard work, a perfect storm of innovation will be there to counter it.

I’d love to hack the airport security system by implementing a reverse-pricing scheme on the airlines. If I could pay them based on their performance rather than on their monopoly I feel like I’d save a bundle and enjoy flying a lot more.

In this YouTube clip, filmmaker David Lynch trashes the experience of watching a movie on your phone. No matter how good phones become, even those that start w/ “i,” we agree. People; popcorn; surroundsound; the images enveloping every part of you; experiencing the created world as the filmmaker envisioned it — that’s what we call watching a movie!

We’ll let David Lynch send you a wake-up call, in his own eloquent way, about experiencing a movie. We’d like to draw your attention to the fact that using the best tools for the best experience is always critical — whether it’s for entertainment or work. When your company produces crap project management tools, why subject yourself to that? Why not use awesome tools produced in the open-source marketplace. When your company tries to control your experience of how you build teams or how you communicate or how you perform evaluations or how you report your results with less-than-awesome (AKA: crappy) tools…why subject yourself to that?

Using the best tools for the job…(“best” as defined by “helping you do YOUR best”)…is supercritical. As Mr. Lynch might say IF he were an organizational design expert, “You’ll be cheated…It’s such a sadness…Stop using the company’s fucking tools…Get real!”

Below is an updated remake of the 1968 Eames classic. If you’d like to view the original Power of Ten, here’s how…

photo: howstuffworks.com

One of the key practices that single-handedly can build or destroy an organization and its people: Access to the best and right tools to do the job, to understand the job, the goals, the strategy and others and to communicate to others. Are user-centered tools (the user being the worker) a most basic and fundamental right of every corporate citizen?

With the right tools anybody can do anything and everything. Without the right tools, we are all hampered, diminished, and our ability to succeed is greatly reduced. Without the right tools, all work is harder and little of it is smarter. With the right tools, anything is possible. What do you think? Are the right tools to do one’s best a right?