The Four Workarounds: How the World's Scrappiest Organizations Tackle Complex Problems

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This organization worked around these obstacles when they realized that you don’t find medicines, but you’ll find Coca-Cola in the remotest places on Earth. Tracey and Samantha wrote their book for those leaders who are curious about how to lead sustainable high performing, innovative and impactful groups of people. Tracey commented: ‘Our book has come at a very important moment - leaders are required to be courageous in reimagining work for young people joining organisations, for a hybrid context and for an ever-changing and ever-challenging external landscape. We explores the ancient needs, gifts and challenges that underlie teamwork while at the same time provides a practical guide to new approaches to work and leadership that make the best use of our unique human gifts. By understanding the ‘social brain’, leaders will be better equipped to create - and sustain - successful groups.’

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Workarounds are very powerful mechanisms for deviating from norms, from these rules that constrain us. What we observe in entrepreneurship, including but not limited to workarounds, is that the most successful leaders are not necessarily visionary. Part I covers what workarounds are and how to come up with them. In Part II I dig into how to cultivate a workaround attitude and mindset, including how to reflect on the ways you typically see, judge, and approach your obstacles. Then, on the more practical side, I’ll show you how you can systematically conceive workarounds to your problems and how your workplace can become more workaround friendly. I conclude with a reflection on how workarounds can ultimately help you with your daily, sometimes messy life.

This is the first field-defining book on the economics of wellbeing and authored alongside Lord Richard Layard (LSE). It is a foundational text on a new science that aims to span the whole of human life. It is particularly suitable when traditional problem-solving methods have systematically failed or when you don’t have the necessary power or resources to pursue the conventional approach (Savaget 2023). The workaround is a creative, flexible, imperfection-loving, problem-solving approach. For ages, global corporations have been lecturing small organizations and not-for-profits on how to get things done. As it turns out, it should have been the other way around. In this groundbreaking audiobook, award-winning researcher Paulo Savaget shows how the most valuable lessons about problem-solving can be learned from the scrappiest groups. Paulo Savaget cleverly reveals how you take scrappiness to success: the workaround. In The Four Workarounds, he uses real world examples to show us smart, efficient ways to problem-solve. This book helps us live happier, successful, and more fulfilling lives." —Jenn Lim, CEO and cofounder of Delivering Happiness, and bestselling author of Beyond Happiness What do you do when you encounter a challenging problem that seems to have no immediate solution? Rather than simply pushing forward on the work in a traditional way, you might try to leverage a “workaround”, or a less-direct method of solving the problem. Paulo Savaget has studied the tactics of many innovative organizations and has determined that there are four key workarounds that they often employ:

The Four Workarounds - Google Books The Four Workarounds - Google Books

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. All the change-making efforts involve deviance. What I tried to show in my book is that deviance, first, is different from disobedience. You can be disobedient and still conform to the rules.

In Brazil, everyone crosses. I’m still conforming to the rules. I’m conforming to the rules of the game because everybody does. This question is actually something that I started thinking about more after I had already finished this research. When I started conducting this research, I had worked for quite a few years as a consultant, as an entrepreneur, so [I was] very engaged in translating knowledge from academic settings to the realities of companies—social enterprises, for example. Some roundabout workarounds are familiar to all of us. Social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic allowed us to buy time and avoid unsurmountable pressure on healthcare systems while we developed vaccines. Employees who invented some of our most beloved products, like the large-screen display monitor, aspirin, and the blue LED lighting, worked around corporate rules to experiment more freely until their invention was ripe to be revealed to their superiors. Homeowners in India, frustrated with men urinating on their walls, curbed this practice by placing tiles of Hindu gods on their walls; after all, urinators wouldn’t commit such a heresy. A smart guide to finding creative solutions for a variety of difficulties ... clever case studies enlighten, and business readers will appreciate the suggestions on how to make one's workplace "workaround friendly." ... Wise and level-headed, this delivers." — Publishers Weekly

The Four Workarounds (with Paulo Savaget) - Todd Henry The Four Workarounds (with Paulo Savaget) - Todd Henry

As well as telling some entertaining tales of cunning loophole-exploitation and next-best ingenuity, the book also touches on the philosophical." — Financial Times On this episode, he shares a little about each of these tactics and how we can employ them each day as leaders and creative pros as we discuss the new book The Four Workarounds. You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. These cases remind us that we often find ourselves constrained or even trapped by pre-existing rules. However, there’s more than one way to be right, and simply following or breaking rules isn’t always the best way to get something done; often there is an option that lies in between. With some creativity and close attention to what rules do (and don’t) say we can benefit from their inadequacies to circumvent or otherwise avoid their purpose. This is especially appealing when we don’t have the power or resources to change things, or we don’t have time to wait for things to change because the need is too urgent.Oxford University professor and award-winning researcher Paulo Savaget reveals the ways that the scrappiest organizations problem solve and how everyone can use the same tools at work and in life. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. I had the desire to communicate with many different audiences, not only restrict [myself] to abstract concepts that normally stay in academia. I wanted to make sure that this knowledge could be used by many different organizations and individuals.