The Benevolent Hacker

"When a 12-year-old can gather information faster, process it more efficiently, reference more diverse professionals, and get volunteer guidance from better sources than you can at work," write Bill Jensen and Josh Klein at the Harvard Business Review, "how can you pretend to be competitive?"

It's an ironic situation in which the tools you use at home are often more effective and efficient than those you use at work. "Business's lingering love of bureaucracy, process, and legacy technology has fallen completely out of sync with what people need to do their best," they explain.

So what can you do? Jensen and Klein tell a story of Richard Saunders, the pseudonymous employee of a major bank who faced the daunting task of producing relevant data during the recent financial meltdown.

"As the crisis unfolded," they recount, "the bank's senior executives cried out, 'Reports! Our kingdom for more reports!' The problem was that what they really wanted—useful, insightful analysis—couldn't easily be produced with the software provided by corporate IT."

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