Growth Drivers: Productivity

Today I wanted to continue our series on growth drivers. In the last video I spoke about the importance of Clarity. The other two are Productivity and Scalability.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize [winner] in economics, once wrote: "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything”. There has been a lot of talk about productivity, perhaps the lack of it. Despite technological advances productivity growth is declining, almost static.

You know when you have productivity as things just get done. Momentum is a wonderful thing, productivity drives momentum. When you don't have productivity, your organisation is disorganised and ineffective. Lots of busy people, but not much progress ,is a sign of a lack of productivity. It may not always feel like that, but when you've experienced pure productivity, nothing else will suffice.

Productivity doesn't just magically materialise. It needs to be created. "Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort." According to Paul J. Meyer. As a business leader you can't demand productivity, but you must equip the people to be all they can be. Even the great Steve Jobs had a view productivity. "You cannot mandate productivity; you must provide the tools to let people become their best."

French productivity guru, Yves Morieux uses the analogy of passing the baton. He chose an example of when the French beat the Americans in the 4x100 relay race. I think the analogy holds true. If we are focusing on our performance as individuals, we do get a result, but our productivity is increased in the understanding of other roles, in the connexion between our people, in the ability to be able to not only perform well, but pass the baton on to the next person.

This driver of ‘Productivity’ sits between our growth pillars of ‘Engage’; the capability to collaborate and motivate to action and ‘Equip’; the ability to reduce constraints and resource to execute effectively. In other words, motivated people with the right tools leads to Productivity. When you have that, you get stuff done, and it's done fast.

This outcome is achieved by focusing on these two areas of ‘Engage’ and ‘Equip’. We engage by collaborating, coordinating and communicating with our team well. And equipping is achieved through scrutinising drivers and constraints, supporting these initiatives with clear responsibility, and simplifying and refining process and the application of resource. A Thought Patrol (thoughtpatrol.com) our Stragile method clearly defines the steps and processes to achieve these outcomes.

So, Productivity is important, very important, but it doesn't sit by itself, the other two drivers of growth are Clarity and Scalability. In the next video we're going to cover our last driver, Scalability; why it's important and how to build it. If you'd like to know more about our Stragile method and how you can achieve your $100 million breakthrough, book a 15 minute ‘Discovery Call’ via the link below or at thoughtpatrol.com.

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Look out of the next video on Scalability. Talk to you soon.