
(Chapter 16) — Training is the manager’s job. Training is the highest leverage activity a manager can do to increase the output of an organization. If a manager spends 12 hours preparing training for 10 team members that increases their output by 1% on average, the result is 200 hours of increased output from the 10 employees (each works about 2000 hours a year). Don’t leave training to outsiders, do it yourself.
This model assumes individuals share group interests, if individuals are too highly self-interested their behavior will be influenced very differently. In low CUA situations they’ll behave based on incentives (a.k.a “free market forces”, like commission rewards for selling certain products). In high CUA situations individuals with high self-interest and low group-interest will be unmanageable, like people panicking on a sinking ship. People’s mix of self-interest and group-interest can shift over time. It’s a manager’s responsibility to align team members to group interests.
AgriProtein is a British company that operates two fly farms in South Africa. Each farm contains 8.4 billion flies, which consume 276 tonnes of food waste and lay 340 million eggs each day. Those eggs (maggots) are dehydrated, flattened and used as animal feed. The company is worth $200m, and they’re planning to open 100 more factories around the world by 2024. [Andrea Lo]