Monday, June 11, 2007

Why How Novel!

Our office subscribes to several automotive industry e-zines to keep us informed about markets & technologies. In today’s edition, the following article appeared:

Ford Idea: Give Engineers More Time to Engineer : Ford Motor Co. is giving its engineers two days per week free of meetings and distractions to devote entirely to engineering work, says The Detroit News.
“Obvious? Sure, but it’s still revolutionary at the famously bureaucratic Ford, according to the newspaper. Ford head of global product development Derrick Kuzak, who is behind the move, says each engineering team can choose which two days are meeting-free. The idea is to help shorten Ford’s product development cycle.”


Speaking from experience, you can get to the point where all of your regular hours are spent in various meetings and you don’t actually sit down to work until the end of the day after everyone leaves. There have been occasional weeks where I’m in this very situation although, thankfully, they aren’t that frequent for me.

But aren’t you in trouble when the company has to specifically delinate time to actually work as opposed to merely talking about work?

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