Productivity is a Fruit of Environment

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize [winner] in economics, once wrote: "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything."

Are you frustrated by how long it takes to get things done? Why is that? What would it take to get higher productivity? We do have a major problem with productivity levels of below 1%, despite all our technological advances. Something is fundamentally wrong, not at the fringes but at the core of how we do leadership, business and run organisations.

Productivity is not an outcome driven by stopwatches and clipboards.

If it were, we would see gains. It’s a product of an engaged environment, created by a leader as its catalyst. The leader encourages and protects the environment, the environment delivers engagement, and engagement produces productivity. Authentic leadership creates an engaging environment that leads to increased productivity.

In today’s business environment, trust in leaders is at an all time low according to the World Economic Forum. Gallup tells us that engagement rates are staggeringly low, currently at 70% disengaged and up to 40% actively disengaged. And as mentioned, productivity rates are down from a mid century rate of 5% to under 1%. If we were to take our attention off productivity as in interception point, and treat it as an outcome; shift our attention to helping leaders create an engaging environment, then high productivity would be the result.

A high trust culture owned and demonstrated by authentic leaders creates an environment conducive to engagement and the result is productivity.