Metrics Matter

There are many ways to improve productivity and performance - via technology, process change, culture change and so on.  But with each one, we need to measure the success (or otherwise) of our initiative to understand what works in our organisation.

We need to identify which metrics are the most important for determining efficiency.and the most appropriate for our particular project.

When selecting the right operational metrics for your company, ask yourself which of the below is most important at the present time, and work from there:

• Productivity
• Operational costs
• Employee engagement
• Product quality
• Customer satisfaction

You should try and balance leading and lagging indicators so that you know what has happened, what is happening, and what should happen in the future.

We should be looking at the performance of our employees - as individuals and as teams … and here we might need both hard (from production records) and soft data (from appraisals).

Financial metrics are often important - what is happening to labour costs, running costs, overheads? … as are quality metrics (Error rates, customer complaints).  These can be supported or clarified with customer satisfaction and customer retention/repeat business metrics.

Employee satisfaction scores (for retention, absenteeism, satisfaction) are another dimension appropriate for specific projects.

You also have to remember that measurement costs money so try to use data already collected for other purposes.

Pick a 'basket of measures' that do not concentrate too much on any one dimension.  For example concentrating on throughput at the expense of quality.

With a comprehensive, balanced  data-driven approach to performance measurement, your organisation can make meaningful process improvements to lower costs, reduce waste, and improve productivity and profits.  The metrics you choose help signal intent, show progress and demonstrate success.

Focus!

I`nterruptions are distractions.  Those people who constantly respond to texts, emails and  messaging systems might feel 'in the loop' but their productivity is probably woefully low.  Discipline is needed to wait until an appropriate time when the task in hand is finished or can be paused with no detriment. Those who cannot be disciplined should turn off their technology to give them periods in which they can fully concentrate.

Multitasking is also distracting.  Those who either try to do two things at once or switch constantly between two tasks will also suffer a lack of performance.  Have you ever tried to read two books at the same time?  Most people who do so find they gain little from either book.  The problems of multitasking are made worse if the tasks in the rotation require the same part of the brain for completion.  So, a creative task could just about be carried out air he same time as a mundane, repetitive task but two creative tasks at the same time is not possible - except for a very few people with strange (even weird) attributes.

Constant interruptions can not only affect concentration - and thus performance; they can also affect employees' mental health.

Some of the 'productivity techniques' suggest assigning specific periods of time to specific tasks (or portions of specific tasks) - and this can be a useful device - again if practised in a disciplined manner.  These periods should be long enough to allow concentration to grow, settle and be effective - say a minimum of 30 minutes.

However you do it, it is important to build barriers that prevent interruptions and distractions looming into your consciousness when you are trying to concentrate.

It also helps if the leaders of work groups create periods of the day or week when there will be no meetings - and employees are discouraged from interrupting their colleagues.

The aim should be to create periods of time - and to allow employees to create their own periods of time - when focus can be total.

Communication is Key

Most people, on starting a new job, turn up with a positive attitude.  They may be nervous about the new situation but they want to do well, to succeed, and in return to be valued and fairly rewarded.

Yet some of these employees will end up being 'let go' or demoted for poor performance.

What goes wrong?

Well, what those new employees need is a clear understanding of their role, and its place in the wider scheme of things, and the expectations of that role by managers.  What is it they are expected to do - and achieve?  

Put more simply they need to know what the goals are, how to achieve them and their role in that achievement.

They also need the skills required to carry out their role. If they do not have all the skills, they will - and should - expect training or development activity to fill any gaps.

If these two conditions are not met - it is almost always not the fault of the employee.  Something has gone wrong with selection, onboarding, communication or training.   Errors in these areas can be catastrophic for the employees - and expensive for the organisation.

Failure to fully inform and prepare employees is a recipe for low productivity.

Hard Work Plus

 We all know that hared work is needed to be truly successful.

However, we also know that hard work alone is not enough.

We need our hard work to be in the right direction.

One common expression of this phenomenon is that managers are very good at doing things right, but leaders are good at ensuring the right thing is done.

But we have still not completed our list of success factors.

We have all seen those who work very hard (perhaps even including ourselves at times) fall from their peak of performance due to exhaustion or burnout.

Many of the great thinkers and successful people throughout history have raised the need for 'down time', when the mind and body are able to recover from their exertions and prepare themselves for the next phase of hard work.

This recovery time might include rest, relaxation, reflection but might alsoinclude sport and  exercise - anything that contributes to an overall life balance.

 

So structure such periods into your day/week of hard work snd you are likely to get results which are better - or at least as good- but you will survive in a better state.  After all, we are seeking long-term productivity, not short bursts of success.

Volunteers Needed

 It is getting increasingly common for firms to introduce opportunities for volunteering amongst their staff. This may be partly altruistic - attempting to do some good for a national charity or for the local community - but most of the firms that do it, do so for ‘selfish’ reasons.    They want to show some community and/or some stakeholders that they are the good guys, (so its a PR exercise) and they hope to cement the engagement of their staff with the organisation.

 

The employees who do take the opportunity to become involved in the volunteering efforts do indeed generally engage more positively with the organisation but they also claim to have improved well-being - often in relation to their mental health.  They value the fact that they themselves are valued as more than a ‘human resource’, more than a number on the payroll…. they are valued for  how they interact with others, including the community with whom the charity  is engaged.

 

The net results  - in addition to improved well-being-  are increased staff retention (reducing hiring and onboarding costs for the organisation), improved attractiveness to potential recruits and perhaps most importantly,  a boost to employee performance and productivity.

So, the introduction of a volunteering programme can have bottom-line impact and can make all members of the organisation feel better about the organisation and themselves.

These companies worried about the effects being temporary can ‘hedge their bets’ somewhat by, say, having a volunteering month each yeast when a particular charitable project is taken on.  The benefits should last longer than the month and should proved an annual boost to organisational performance.

Inspire Yourself

To be productive and to make our organisation productive, we have to inspire each person in the organisation to be engaged with the company and their role within it, to want to be the best they can be art their role, to be constructively critical of the way their tasks are carried out, making suggestions for improvement. They should have all the skills they need for their work, understand and accept their targets for performance and be contributing members of their team. 

But if you want your organisation to be like this, you must first make yourself like this.

You need to show up properly skilled,  motivated, assured, committed and inspired if you are to inspire others.

So take a look at yourself and take an audit of your capabilities.

Any gaps? If so, set about filling them.

Develop yourself, seek advice. Improve your knowledge, seek a mentor or coach.  

Again, if you develop yourself, you have a much better chance of understanding how to develop the teams and individuals within the organisation.

This is simple, common sense … but it isn't necessarily simple to do.  If it were, we would have lots of competent,. Inspiring leaders and managers.   

Unfortunately, we don't!

Can Self-/Reporting of Performance be Helpful?

Spoiler alert: Yes it can!

Some forms of self-reporting, as part of employee assessment snd review, ask those employees to report on how well they have performed.

One would assume that most employees would consider their performance to be good - or at least 'acceptable'.

In fact, employees are generally quite honest -and quite perceptive, in self-reporting their performance.  This is useful it gives not just an indication of self-value but a benchmark against which an employer evaluation can be compared.   

If both (employee and employer) evaluations suggest sub-standard performance, it is much easier to agree a forward development path with the employee.

If the employee is happy with his/her performance but the employer is not, a discussion is necessary to see if the employee is fully aware of the requirements/standards for the work.

If the employee is unhappy with their own performance, but the employer is not, this should be investigated.  It might mean the employee is unhappy with some other aspect of the work/employment or is more generally disengaged.

If both agree performance is good, there is no problem - but a friendly chat might serve as a welcome reward to increase employee well-being.

So self-reporting of performance provide the means by which an employee/employer gap in perception of performance can be identified and used to drive improvement.  

Strategy and Commitment (and even Charisma) are Not Enouggh

We all know of inspirational leaders.  We might not know them personally; we might not have worked with them or under them.  But we have seen them on the TV, read about them in newspapers and online.

Some of these inspirational leaders have emerged as truly successful businessmen - successful over a lengthy time period. Others may end up as failures or bankrupts.

What makes the difference between the successful ones and the rest?

Well, firstly the successful ones have managed to turn their vision into a workable and successful strategy.  They have worked out what they needed to do to realise their vision and fulfil their mission.   However, some of the failures will also have managed to do this. What these also-rans have failed to do is to operationalise their strategy - to create and execute action plans to bring about the new reality.  They probably had help from good managers who marshalled the resources, motivated the workforce, installed effective quality management processes - and so on…. You get the picture.

Strategy and planning need the blanket of operational excellence to ensure long-term success.Strategy and Commitment (and even Charisma) are Not Enough

AI success depends on human intelligence

 Being introduced to one of the new AI services (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) is like meeting a genie who offers you three wishes.

What should you ask for?

The power of AI seems so immense that it is difficult to think of the prompts to give your AI or the questions to ask it.

So, think of the things that keep you awake at night; the directions in which you have occasionally thought your business might move  ,the problems you currently have, the threats you face - and construct prompts that might give you intelligence on which to base future decisions - or suggestions you might use to tackle your problems.  Make sure you give your AI the context in which any decision has to be made or any strategy created.

It’s ironic, isn't it! The chances of using artificial intelligence effectively depend on how well humans think about the situations they want to address and the context in which their business exists.

Productivity is a long=term issue

 Long-term planning can be difficult for CEOs.  A company is only as good as its latest quarterly report (according to many investors), so today's results are crucial.  Yet, real change— especially culture change— can take years to bring about.

Workforce planning needs to be undertaken alongside strategic change, technology change, and process change—all of which are long-term issues.  And that planned workforce has to be developed and improved slowly but surely to ensure available skills match those identified as essential within the other change projects.

Each of these changes can result in a temporary productivity drop— and this has to be carefully communicated to the Board of Directors— and perhaps to a small number of key investors— especially if there are any activist investors trying to stir up Board changes.

The CEO has to be brave and strong— and has to champion any major change, driving it through opposition and resistance— from the Board, from the management team, and from employees. This requires a clear vision of the future which can be shared with these stakeholders to bring them on board, willing to accept any blips and temporary faults for the sake of the long-term position.

The alternative is to make short, sharp, sub-optimal changes which might improve this quarter's figures but might actually mitigate against long-term success.

Improving Work/Life Balance

Physical and mental stress are all too common as more people seem to find the pressures of completing expected work tasks and expected in-office time too much to bear.  As firms shed labour to cut costs, the problems become worse.

Work-life balance is not merely about cutting working hours or simply  dividing hours between WORK and HOME  life' it is about creating harmony between the two. 

Many people think that they should be available for work for as close to 24/7 as possible. However long snd hard work does not always mean effective work - and ineffective work results in more delays, errors and time wasted. What is needed - as often cited - is to work smarter -  to manage tasks intelligently and make each minute of work contribute to overall goals.This, of course, can be helped by working aids - computers, AI, etc - but using these does not always lead to efficiency. They, too, must be used in a smart way.

To achieve a better work-life balance, individuals must set realistic goals (or have them set for them), manage their time effectively and (especially) eliminate or delegate non-essential tasks. Additionally, understanding when one is most productive and structuring the day accordingly can improve  efficiency, leaving more time for relaxation, for personal interests and for the family.

A well-balanced life creates a positive mindset, enhances relationships and improves overall well-being and mental health   This leads to improved productivity.

If are an employer, you should encourage and support your employees in managing their work-life balance. It benefits both them  and your organisation.

Move Further Away to Find Labour

 

Times are tough for both commercial organisations and governments in terms of recruiting the labour needed for economic growth.  Employment is high in most developed countries and there is a trend towards disengagement and; ’quiet quitting’.

This means that firms have to look further afield (than traditional labour markets to find new staff.  This ‘distance’ brings into play:

• early school and college leavers taking their first step onto the employment ladder;

• the long-term unemployed who have found it challenging to get back to work;

• immigrants looking to establish  new careers;

• Released prisoners., who find securing employment to be difficult

• Early retirees who find themselves in difficult financial situations.

Each of these categories offers a challenge but all will need some form of training and preparation for employment to maximise their chances of success - and their contribution.

Governments have a role to play in providing routes to these new markets, especially since many of the people involved may be in the social benefits ’system’.

Firms may want to look at their present aging workforce and consider how they can retain their skills for longer - at least while they train and mentor the next working generation.

A new set of markets might need a new set of employment policies and practices - with increased flexibility of contracts to suit the differing needs of these new groups of potential workers.

So, remember… your talent pipeline may be longer than you think but you may need to carry out some work to make it effective.