C. Northcote Parkinson Quotes

We may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote.

We're reviewing everything to see how we can do it better, faster, and more efficiently.

As the number of people who work at Basecamp has grown, I've noticed places where we could use more features, like management, structure, and guidelines. I've also noticed places where we've overengineered ourselves and should pull back.

I believe there are a lot of inefficiencies in the way technical innovation happens.

I think one key part of doing more with less is to be more strategic, to realize what the objectives you're truly trying to accomplish are and then to drive with greater focus towards those objectives.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options.

People don't want lots and lots of single purpose devices. They do not want to have to learn how to set up something for photos, another thing for music, another thing for video.

I try to be as efficient as possible.

Prune - prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually.

A good system shortens the road to the goal.

We dried continuously day and night. We had no efficient way to do it, so we built this new popcorn plant.

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

The most efficient labor-saving device is still money.

The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.

The time I save setting up and cleaning up probably balances out by the time I spend on output.

The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

That's the mantra I use when the team tells me something is too complicated. People keep saying, 'We need more prioritization.' I say, 'Guys, what you want is less work. And that is not going to happen.'

The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.

One of the important lessons of the Internet is, how easy it is to get things done completely shapes what gets created. For that reason, technologies like Amazon's cloud service are very important. Even if they aren't technically impressive, they make things easy to do.

Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it.

If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e. more and more choice, we're likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don't do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be.

I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore.

Whether you're a programmer or a seamstress, it's all about new techniques, simplifying old techniques, and consolidating steps. Making things go faster - but not worse.

It's not about working harder; it's about working the system.