Going Backwards

The UK is technically in recession - it has had two consecutive quarters with negative growth. Worse, the economy has been at best stagnant for over two years and productivity has been falling.

Our Prime Minister, when he got the job, gave 5 pledges, one of which was to grow the economy.  He failed in four of them, including the one relating to growth.

What is the problem?

Putin is part of the problem.   The UK is a significant network importer of energy and Putin’s actions over the last few years have resulted in massive cost of energy rises.

One could try, therefore to defend our Prime Minister and suggest he is just unlucky in his timing.  BUT…

The Conservative Party has been in power for fourteen years and seems to have had no consistent energy strategy over that time …  so it can be argued that they are reaping what they have (not) sown.  Perhaps the global warming crisis should have made an energy crisis obvious and triggered some planning response.

The job of government in creating higher productivity is to build the infrastructure that creates the potential for higher productivity - the macroeconomic, transport, communications, energy, education and training infrastructures. 

How many of you can say that your government is doing a good job?

Small can be (more) efficient

SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) have a number of problems reaching optimum productivity when comported to ‘the big boys’.  

It is harder for them to achieve the same economies of scale and hard for them to put the same pressure on their suppliers to contain costs.  They are less likely to employ consultants and advisers, yet also less likely to have their own productivity specialist on board.

Does this means that SMEs are likely to be less productive?

Well no, actually.  Small organisations tend to maintain focus on costs and cashflow, and they are are often small enough for the owner/manager to keep an eye on all parts of the business. They also generally have shorter communication channels.  

So, they hove some inherent advantages.

This does not mean that they have no need to think about their productivity - or perhaps think about it in a more coherent and structured way.  But they can blend productivity analysis with these inherent advantages.

For example, it can be easier to practice forms of kaizen if you already have effective teams and effective communication with and between teams.  If they have effective ways of monitoring costs and cashflow, they possibly have the basis of a set of productivity metrics.

If they have a number of managers, they may be  able to use each one to review/analyse another section or department to lend an untutored and fresh eye. (If these manager are given some basic training in productivity analysis and improvement, so much the better.)

‘Use what you have to give you more’ should be their strategy and motto.

Focus on productivity as well as costs.  And take advice occasionally to get some specialist knowledge and input.

You might be efficient (relatively) now - but you can improve further!

Silo Mentaity

Silo mentality is one of the most significant obstacles to organisational success.  It has become more severe and more common during the era of hybrid working and especially remote working.

Because communication takes more effort, and is more subject to  errors and misunderstandings. when people are not face-to-face, it means that employees are often not sharing information with departments or teams as frequently (or in the same way) as they previously did.

As a result, members of a team may not fully share the purpose or operating parameters of a project, or they may be working at cross purposes on different parts of a project.

And, of course, if information is not fully shared, it is less likely that ideas will build on one another - and innovation is stifled.

It is rather obvious that in such a situation we need to improve communication in ways which reduce this silo mentality - and encourage people to engage across teams and to share a common purpose.

This has to start at the top with effective and repeated sharing of the organisation’s vision and purpose - and the contribution to be made by various groups and teams.

Managers should seek cooperation and alliances with other groups and teams  - to create semi-permanent communication channels with other teams.

Managers should also set clear objectives and SMART targets which focus their staff on outputs and outcomes.

Any signs of conflict or competition across teams has to be sorted as quickly as possible

Praise, recognition and rewards should be cross-team and reinforce collaborative links snd alliances.

If effective links can be built with members of other complementary teams in pursuit of agreed goals and a clear vision of success, silos start to disappear.  

However, managers need to stay alert to the effects of residual or re-growing silos and take immediate action to destroy them, refocusing efforts of staff on what is to be achieved.

Exploit the Ziegarnik Effect

The Zeigarnik effect describes the way unfinished tasks remain active in our mind, intruding into our thoughts and our sleep until they are dealt with, much like a hungry person will notice every restaurant and appetising smell on their way home and then lose all interest when they’ve had their dinner. You may have noticed the effect yourself during your exams in school, when you crammed before the exam, sat it, and then promptly forgot everything you had just learned because you no longer had any use for the information.

The effect is named after Bluma Zeigarnik, a Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist. She tells the story that she was out for dinner one night at a restaurant in Berlin with a large group of colleagues when she noticed her waiter’s impressive ability to remember all the complex food and drink orders. After everyone had finished eating and had left the restaurant, Zeigarnik realised that she had forgotten her purse, so she walked back, found the waiter who had served them, and asked for his help. But he did not remember her; where had she been sitting?

When she asked him how he could have forgotten her so quickly, the waiter apologised and told her that he always forgot his orders (and customers) as soon as the meals had been delivered and paid for. The only way that he could do his job was to focus exclusively on the open orders he still had to deal with. This suggested that incomplete tasks remain in the mind until they are completed. Zeigarnik decided to investigate.

She conducted a series of expejriemrns and found that those who had their work interrupted were  more likely to remember what they had been doing than the participants who had actually completed the tasks.

Psychologists who followed up on on her work concluded that interrupted tasks cause ‘psychic tension which keeps the task front and centre of the brain. When the task is completed, that tension disappears and the task can be cleared from ‘working memory’.

You can force this effect by starting on a task you know you cannot complete in the current work session.  When you leave the task ,it will niggle sway at the back of your mind, prompting you to do some more work on it.  It may also have the added advantage of allowing your subconscious mind to address the issue, improving your ability to create new ideas or solve problems.

The Zeigarnik  effect also suggests taking brief pauses or rests will help your motivation to complete your unfinished tasks and will help you consolidate your thinking on the issue in hand.