Tausi Insider

Writer Annie Diller called a schedule “a net for catching days.” In The Writing Life , she noted that what we do with each hour adds up to what we do with our lives: “A schedule defends from chaos and whim.” But the man who has given millions of people a rigorous system for organizing the chaos of their lives through his Getting Things Done approach, David Allen, recently noted that at some point you must be guided by instinct. “Every decision we make about what action to take at any point in time is an intuitive risk. I have 20 minutes before my next meeting – should I call Bob, work on chapter eight or go get Susan’s opinion on the new software?” he writes in his newsletter. Mr. Allen’s system revolves around lists. Many of us try to prioritize our tasks, perhaps coding them A, B or C or using the features of our to-do app to rank their importance. It seems rational, scientific in a way. But he reminds us those are inevitably simplistic rating systems and miss some important conte...

Dawn Calleja, editor of ROB magazine, Dec 2021 Steph Martyniuk/Tausi Insider Each December for the past few decades, this magazine has named one lucky leader our CEO of the Year. For the most part, we’ve had a good run, from the somewhat staid (Michael Medline) to the brash (Hunter Harrison) to the downright controversial (Bill Ackman). But there’s one thing I’ve always regretted, and that’s not giving the title to Maple Leaf Foods chief executive Michael McCain in 2008. McCain was certainly in the running—in fact, he appeared on that month’s cover—but the general consensus was that the timing was wrong: It was just a few months after tainted meat from a Maple Leaf plant killed 22 people and made hundreds more ill. “Going through the crisis,” McCain told reporters at the time, “there are two advisers I’ve paid no attention to. The first are the lawyers, and the second are the accountants. It’s not about money or legal liability—this is about our being accountable for providing consum...