2025-09-11
5 分钟The Economist. Hi, this is Ethan Wu, co-host of Bunny Talks, our business and finance podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've handpicked an article we recommend from the most recent edition of The Economist.
I hope you enjoy it.
Very premature babies need lots of immediate medical attention,
which is why one neonatal team in an American hospital texted the acronym ELBW,
shorthand for extremely low birth weight,
to relevant clinical staff if they wanted them to get to the unit fast.
Unfortunately,
some recipients of this message took it to mean that a baby had a problem with its elbow and did not require an urgent response.
This excruciating story is one of many told in a new book,
There's Got to Be a Better Way, by Nelson Reppening,
a business school professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Donald Keefer,
a one-time operations executive at Harley-Davidson, who also lectures at MIT.
The author's premise is that many of the processes which govern work within organizations are broken.
Whether they are flawed from the outset or malfunction over time,
they need constant monitoring and improvement.
At the heart of the book is a simple instruction to managers.
Go and see how things actually work.
If you aren't embarrassed by what you find, they write, you probably aren't looking closely enough.