Its a Mess

 Politicians in the UK have been groin g on asb out 'growth' for some time now.  All major political parties  have 'growth on their agenda and claim that they are the pretty that can deliver this growth.

Now you and I know that growth - in this context - is really a shorthand for productivity' since any growth must be via productivity gains if it is to be sustainable - especially if, as in the UK the population (and especially the working age population) is declining. Worse still, an increasing portion of the working age population is on benefits wityha rapid growth in those claiming benefit - and not working - due to mental health problems

I believe that this is due to societal change which increasingly medicalises natural parts of the human condition such and anxiety and  worry, People who are worrying about just about anything now 'cannot cope' and must be taken out of to work situations.  

The blame is often laid at the door of the COVID pandemic as if this changed the mental condition off millions of people.  

My own theory ids that we should 'blame' the practice of 'working from home' (WFH).  Many people got used to WFH during the pandemic,.  This. changed working routines completely and gave people lots of little chances for mini-breaks and  distractions  - meaning that those people got used to diverting their attention sway from the actual work often and occasionally for long periods while they did some other non-work related task.  When they returned to work - or sometimes only thought about returning to work - they realised they were returning to a disciplined, supervised situation where they would not have the ability for these distractions and diversions.

The UK government has announced a plan to get young people back to work by creating training opportunities and apprenticeships.  I approve.  This means that those young people that DO want to work may get an opportunity to do so,  Any action that provides opportunities for otherwise excluded individuals is a positive move. However the government has to address the growing welfare bill alongside this.  The productivity problem is a large one and needs tacking from all angles.

Inspiring Others

Leadership is a difficult concept to 'bottle'.  I have studied leadership theory and even contributed a little to it.  Yet I would have trouble boiling the concept down to a couple of sentences - to go in a dictionary, for example.  

This is partly because there are different kinds of leadership - for different types of organisation, for different situations and for different tasks.  This is why transferring leaders from one sector to another does not always work.

However some of the 'softer' elements of leadership are more transferrable.  Take the notion of inspiring others to better contributions and higher performance.  This is something that most leaders, and many of their followers, think is important.

We need people to share the mission and vision, to understand the priorities, to want to maximise  their contribution. We want them to ask themselves everything morning, "What can I do today to help 'move the needle'?; "How can I best help my team?"  They will only do this if they do share the overall mission and they trust the leaders of the organisation to make decisions on the basis of shared values.  If these factors are in play, they will accept that the organisation sometimes has to take difficult decisions

It is the job of the leadership not only to communicate and espouse these values and the mission and vision but to live them - to act in accordance with them in everything they do and to keep employees informed of what is happening - and why.  This creates unifying factors that 'glue' disparate parts of the organisation together with mutual trust and respect

There is a possibly apocryphal, story of JFK being shown round the NASA Cape Canaveral space facility. He came across a janitor sweeping the floor and asked him, "What do you do here?"  The janitor replied, "I help get our astronauts to the moon".

Now that's the attitude you beed to try and create?

Heed the Lerssons ffrom other Industries

It is amazing how so many sectors fail to observe, and adopt (or adapt) successful moves in other sectors.  One of the most successful innovations (and productivity improvement moves) of my lifetime is the introduction of the containerswithin the logistics sector.  We are so used to seeing ships laden with hundreds - or even thousands - of containers that we forget that this was a relatively recent (1950s).innovation 

Before this, materials from ships were unloaded piece by piece and the turnaround for a large cargo ship could have been weeks.  Goods were also much more likely to be damaged by the loading/unloading process and thefts from ports were more common. So, the container solved a number of problems and was adopted across much of the logistics sector to allow for more efficient transfer of goods from one carrier to another - ship to train, for example.

The result was a revolution in global transport (and global trade) with much faster turnaround times and reduced shipping/transport costs.  All because someone had the bright idea to adopt a standard sized container.

Another  important innovation was the development of the pallet for storing/loading/transporting materials - meaning handling equipment and storage facilities could be made to established standard dimensions.

So logistics has some good practice - and important lessons.  How many other sectors can point to such successes.   

For example, the construction sector has been slow - indeed, reluctant - to adopt modular construction techniques. Experiments and small-scale innovations have been tried but there is no large-scale move towards modular components for buildings.

Perhaps there are good reasons for this but I cannot see them.  Surely there are enough common factors among buildings of particular types to allow for a degree of standardisation and the use of pre-fabricated components.

The lesson here is that if you are trying to improve productivity and innovation, you should widen your horizons when looking for ideas and potential improvements.  

Look at your competitors by all means but also look at other industries and sectors.

You Need Soft Skills

I've spent a lot of my life helping individuals and organisations acquire the skills needed to help improve productivity.  In doing so, I have observed that it is often HOW changes are implemented that determines their effectiveness and their success

Too many managers think their role is to be tough, uncompromising leaders doing unto the workforce what is needed to make them efficient.

However, I have regularly pointed out that workers are rarely inefficient because they are not working hard enough.  Much more likely is that the overall system within which they work does not allow them to be fully efficient.  The organisation of working systems and processes causes delays, bottlenecks, quality problems and employee frustration.  However, they might still reject proposed changes from management because of their fear of the unknown ,their misguided understanding of the changes and what they mean for this own work role snd well-being.

In such situations, it is the job of the manager to devise changes and improvements that will improve productivity but importantly also  to explain these changes in ways that allow employees to understand the reasons for the changes, the effects of the changes snd the longer-term conditions the will bring about. The manager needs to explain how the changes will be carried out and why they are not threatening to employees.

It is these softer skills of communication and explanation that can ensure an effective change process  .... skills which must be grafted onto - or rather be an integral part of - the technical change process.

Learn to be soft when needed!  Make sure everyone is on the same side.

Productivity improvement must be something that is done WITH the employees not TO the employees.

 

What Should You Be Doing?

Most people find, or think, they have too much to do.  Naturally, they try and concentrate on those things that they consider to be the most important.

However even this can be fraught with difficulty. If you are not clear about your long-term goals, deciding what is important is difficult.

Here is a 'trick' worth trying.

List the three things that you think are the really important goals in your life/career.  Notice 'goals' not 'dreams'.

Then for each one of these core goals, list the 3,4 or 5 tasks you need to accomplish in order to further the core goals.   

That gives you approximately 15 tasks you need to carry out to make progress towards reaching your goals.  Now divide these tasks into short, medium and longer term.  This gives a very broad outline future schedule.

Is this scheduled achievable? Think carefully!

If not, you need to :

Remove some of the tasks from your schedule; or

Move some tasks into the next further away time period - say, from short-term to medium-term.

Eventually, you get what you consider a realistic schedule. 

Now you have to create weekly or daily actions that help you carry out these tasks. 

Again check that the resulting schedule of activity is realistic.

Then start working through these daily or weekly tasks.

At the end of each week, review progress and amend the schedule if necessary.

If you are not making reasonable progress, it suggests the tasks/aims are not sufficiently important to you

Think again about your goals and aspirations.  Think critically and be realistic.  

Reflect, rinse and repeat.

Productivity is not about cost-cutting

Many people (even quite a lot of managers and directors) think that productivity improvement involves cutting costs.  It can - and certainly cutting costs should improve productivity.  However this should not form the basis of a productivity improvement strategy.

Concentrating on cutting costs tends to lead to, at best, sub-optimal changes in the organisation and, at worst, a disastrous s loss of vital skills and expertise.

Productivity improvement should not form part of an organisation's strategy - it should BE the strategy.  The aim should be to make revolutionary and/or incremental changes to what the organisation does - and how it does it - in pursuit of improved quality, resilience and overall excellence.

Such changes should then drive improvements in revenue and lowering of costs (pro rata to output).  So cost-cutting is the result of an effective productivity improvement strategy, not the basis of it. 

Diagnosis looks simple

I read a lot of papers and articles about productivity - or more usually, about the lack of productivity.  Most Western nations have had little productivity growth over the last few years.

Many of these articles will make some kind of diagnosis - what has gone wrong or what needs putting right.   Occasionally I think that some of these diagnoses are correct - or is that just because the views coincide with my own.

However, the people making these diagnoses are generally academics, economists or consultants.  They are not people with the responsibility to take action to solve the problem - they make the diagnosis but have no responsibility for carrying out the cure.

Those who do have that responsibility perhaps get overwhelmed and confused by the number of, and variety of, the various diagnoses.  They tend to fall back on ‘standard’ cause and effect scenarios - so we get no innovative treatments or courses of action.

Now if those responsible were to ask me …….

Continuing debate over WFH

There has been much debate over the relative productivity effects of working from home (WFH) versus office-based versus hybrid working.    Companies who sought to reduce property expensesbyn switcghing to WFH have genersally been disappointed by the resulting productivity delivered and quite a few have tried to encourage or even insist upon return to  office-based working (RTO).   Employees, perhaps not surprisingly, have proved difficult to entice back - they like the convenience and flexibility of WFH.

2026 is likely to see this battle of wills continue.  Some think employers have the upper hand but it seems that many employees are willing to lose their job rather than RTO.

Unions also are willing to take the side of the work-from-homers, … especially public service unions.

So it is perhaps more even a battle than it at first seems. 

Unfortunately, this looks like continuing the productivity stagnation of the last few years.  

Its not better - or mnore - HR you need.

 A recent article on the Gartner website suggested that with other approaches not producing effective results, what the business world needs is better human resource management to improve labour productivity.

I couldn't agree less.

I've said before that whoever coined the phrase 'human resource management' should have been shot - at least twice.  Referring to employees as if they are simply numbers in a spreadsheet just like other resources demeans the people involved and suggests people, their needs ,their support, their performance can be treated collectively in groups or batches.

I am not suggesting that we do not bother to address these issues.  They are important but I know that labour productivity is rarely a core issue that can be addressed alone. Most productivity failures are due to errors or deficits in strategy, infrastructure , and in system and process design,  

Of course …get those right and you do have to address training and development needs of employees to make sure they have the right knowledge and skills to realise the potential productivity of those underlying success factors.  But addressing the training  and development needs of groups and individuals is not likely to be successful if those underlying success factors are not addressed first.

It's like the issues of computerisation and automation.  If you apply these to your present inefficient systems and processes, you get faster mistakes, errors snd defects.   Applying skilled, competent snd proficient employees to  poor systems snd processes can not make up for those inherent, existing inefficiencies.

Improving roads has more effect on the speed and comfort of car travel than building better cars.

So don't, by implication, blame your employees. Us ethem to help you improve those underlying systems, processes snd working methods.

Bring People Together

We know that innovation often arises from an odd or unexpected coming together of people with disparate skills, different attitudes, different knowledge sets and perhaps different attitudes.  There are even innovation approaches and techniques that aim to simulate (or stimulate) these 'comings together' amongst individuals.

Yet over the last few years we have allowed workers to choose to work from home where such comings together are impossible. 

The water cooler, the kettle, the snack machine are places where people gather (informally, yes and for a short time) but brief interchanges of information, progress reports, ideas, even complaints can get others thinking.

When would you not encourage (or even insist on) people coming back to the office to make these interchanges possible once more.   It may not give you immediate revolutionary innovation but it almost certainly does no harm - and it does help employees engage with their colleagues and with the organisation.

You might even think of new ways of creating interaction and idea-generation and use this as an attraction to entice people back to the office.

Doomed to be Disappointed

 I was reading some research recently which suggested that managers and employees have quite different assessments of how much time might be saved by the introduction of AI to an organisation, with managers expecting significantly larger productivity gains.

This may not be surprising but it is important.  It means that employees are more wary about AI and managers are much more likely to be disappointed by those gains if they fall short of their expectations.

Of course it is difficult to make the assessment in the first place since the largest source of information is the publicity and 'information' put about by the companies selling AI models and services.

It seems as though managers need to question this information more thoroughly and ask for information (and results) that are set in their particular situation and context.

This has always been true - and the lack of such research and questioning is why so many 'snake oil salesmen' and consultants make a lot of money whilst often disappointing their clients.

You have been warned!

Talk To Me!

Do you spend a lot of trime reading- and writing - emails? Are you an avid user of Slack or What's App?   Many people do / are.

Well, perhaps you need to rethink your approach to communications.

Why not talk to people.

Generally, face-to-face, or at least synchronous, communication is better for complex and important matters.  It is easier to read body language and other signs so you can recognise your message has been understood  It allows the recipient to ask questions and seek clarifications .It allows further expansion on a topic and genrally is more efficient.

Email is still very useful - especially for circulating information to a group - but tends to lead to information overload as people send copies to people who do not need the communication.

So, in 2026, plan your communication media/methods for maximum effect.

Happy New Year!