The obsession
We love to make things more productive. We strive to be cheaper, more efficient, higher yielding. It is the holy grail, taking up most of our working hours.
More for less in itself isn’t a bad goal, but who decides if we are being productive?
Myopic measurement
Imagine you flip burgers for a living and you are on a productivity drive.
First you need to create a baseline productivity measure. Perhaps burgers flipped per paid hour. Then you start to improve things:
- You buy an automatic burger flipper
- You invest in burger flipping training
- You set you an incentive based on your burger flipping prowess
- You capture the “one best way“
- You write burger flipping standard operating procedures
- You set up quality circles to foster continuous improvement
Before you know it you will have doubled burger flips. Your stats will look outstanding. You will christen yourself the burger flipping centre of excellence.
There is only one small problem…
Nobody wants to buy the burgers.
You have just created a pile of them that are going cold. And when they have gone cold they are going in the bin.
It would have been cheaper and more productive for the burger flipper to sit on his hands. At least that way you’d have saved on the cost of the steak.
The lesson in all this is that only your customer can determine if you are being productive.
If they don’t want what you are producing then — despite your claims to the contrary — increasing productivity is costing you money.
Stating the obvious
My example is easy to dismiss. Nobody would be so foolish that they flipped burgers that their customers don’t need. Would they?
Oddly though, to make sure that they aren’t that foolish the prize burger flippers — McDonald’s — have put in a system, a burger rack, to ensure they only make what they need.
And if you don’t make burgers?
Now take yourself out of a simple fast-food joint and put yourself somewhere far more complex. Perhaps a general hospital, a large legal practice or a chain of supermarkets.
In our complicated world we divide to conquer. We create divisions and departments to manage the scope and scale of our organisations. It is easy to focus on internal productivity gains. Incentivising people to go faster and harder within their own specialism.
And lose site of what it means for the customer.
If you want to be more productive
Ask your customer what productive looks like
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all
~ Peter Drucker
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Image by Lynn Friedman
Adrian Swinscoe says
Hi James,
Great point. Ever thought of calling up some politicians and explaining this to them?
Adrian
James Lawther says
I struggle enough with internal politics Adrian, let alone those with a capital P
Annette Franz says
This is a big problem in business.
People at these companies too often focus on things that don’t matter to their customers; they do so because they think they know what’s best. Or they focus on an inefficient process that needs to be made efficient… even though that process probably ought to be killed instead of “made efficient.”
Annette :-)
Sara May says
I love this post! Thanks for the insightful information and for keeping us focused on the most important target: the customer.
James Lawther says
Glad you liked it Sara, thanks for the comment
Maz Iqbal says
Hello James,
That which you share reminds of something I read just the other day. It went something like this:
When you go and buy an item which has been reduced (as it is on sale) from £1000 to £750 you have not saved £250. You have spent £750.
Yes, productivity has always to be seen in context. And looking at it in context I wish to point out Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. There is a trade-off between which is necessary for productivity (monoculture) and requisite variety (diversity of people, practices, technology). So productivity optimisation has short-term benefits and a long term handicap.
All the best to you.
Maz
James Lawther says
But given we only have short term targets it has to be the way to go Maz. Doesn’t it? :/
And thinks for the tip on Ashby’s law.