Making a fetish of overwork bodes ill for productivity

Extra hours are spent reversing poor decisions and smoothing ruffled feathers

Steps to seismic shifts: an infographic captured live by a graphic artist at the IMI’s recent masterclass with Margaret Heffernan. The infographic is based on the insights from the session, which explored the small steps an organisation can take that lead to seismic shifts in culture and performance

When engineers talk about ‘asset integrity’, what they usually refer to is the good practice of servicing and repairing equipment before it breaks. Companies that use a lot of machinery take this very seriously; companies that mostly just use people rarely do.

Although to my knowledge no other nation than Japan has a word for death by overwork - karoshi - we probably need one. For while it is tempting to imagine the ...