Task level improvements don’t drive productivity

In this recent Forbes.com article, “Overcoming the Modern Productivity Paradox”, Carter Busse makes the point that company productivity does not come from tasks, rather it is derived from well-structured processes.

It’s a sentiment with which I agree.  There are thousands of books on personal productivity and yet we continue to suffer from poor, or stagnant productivity and have done so now for over fifteen years.

In a culture of immediate gratification there is something attractive about the latest tool that purports to save time with a specific task or workflow. Such tools are often easy to implement at an individual level and we are beguiled with the promise of greater efficiency and productivity.

What we often fail to realise is that speeding up one task, does not necessarily improve the outcome of the entire process.  I worked once with a finance manager who undermined the company processes because it made their life easier.  They created an entire eco system around their approach to month-end reporting that satisfied their objectives.  However, it didn’t meet wider objectives or follow the agreed company processes, and consequently had an adverse effect on the productivity of other team members and ultimately the business as a whole.

We often see it in manufacturing, where a company struggling with production delays or quality issues will focus on improving individual tasks such as speeding up output at a specific machine, or improving worker output.  These changes rarely lead to overall productivity improvements, and sometimes can have an adverse effect, such as generating more work in progress as subsequent tasks are not calibrated to keep up with the faster output at one workstation.  It is only by reviewing entire processes and ensuring that each step of production is optimised and integrated with all the others that we can look to decrease production times, improve quality and achieve increase in employee satisfaction.

The temptation to sign up for the latest software tool which will save us a few hours a week is huge.  The unintended consequence of this is to create a software landscape that is fragmented, fraught with duplication and ultimately a headache to manage for the IT department.

What we often fail to remember is that productivity of an organisation is the output of the whole.  There is no productivity gain achieved if saving one department a few hours a week, results in an extra headcount in another to cope with supporting the extra software now in use.

It is only by measuring the productivity of the whole, and tracking the impact of changes on this, we can hope to understand whether our efforts are having a positive impact. Calculate your productivity here.

And if you fancy reading a book about company productivity, UNBLOCK will be available from November 5th 2024.