The Productivity Leader
Here’s a thought
“The productivity of British Workers lags behind other nations; surely that doesn’t include us, you and I?”
Two days after the new UK Government’s first budget productivity is in the news. I hear the productivity of our workforce lags behind United States and other developed nations and that if we were at their levels it would equate to about £21k per British family. I sometimes wonder where they get these numbers from. Anyway we hear yet again that the planning laws are going to be relaxed so we can build more houses – that should sort it, right!
Relaxing Planning and building more houses and infrastructure might help productivity at a macro level but what if those managing and doing the building are not very productive, will that improve or worsen the productivity stats?
At the micro level, that’s you and I, ineffective delegation is one of the top three productivity blockers. Delegation is in every conversation I have with leaders and managers; it may not be their biggest issue but it’s everywhere and mostly people are frustrated. And it’s not just in construction, here is a real life example:
I was talking with John my financial advisor and I asked him how business was going. He said “I need an extra pair of hands, things are really busy. I am thinking about recruiting but I know I will spend more time explaining and training. It’s the same for my daughter she was telling me the other day that delegation just doesn’t work”
Interested I said “tell me more”:
Jayne, his daughter, asked one of her staff to do a one hour task.
It took four hours, she then spent thirty minutes reviewing it only to find ‘it’s all wrong’.
She then spent forty five minutes doing it herself.
Annoyed, she complained to her boss about the incompetence and bad attitude of her report and they discussed it for thirty minutes.
Nothing further happened.
Three people are frustrated and annoyed.
What was planned to take one hour actually consumed just under six hours.
Productivity = planned divided by actual x 100%. In this case 17%
In my Delegation for Performance and Productivity Programme I share this story and ask if people can relate to it, most say it’s pretty much representative of what goes on in their business. We then delve deeper into delegation and develop practical approaches to transform their own performance as leaders and managers and productivity through the ranks.
Improving productivity at our level will deliver improvement in business results, that’s profit to you and I. And as your peoples productivity goes up they feel happier and you get more ‘discretionary effort’ from them which further increases productivity – it’s a virtuous loop, a win for you and a win for them.
My vision is you, The Productivity Leader, and I build productivity bottom up and that meets Government’s top down approach so together we get more new houses and infrastructure built more productively. I think that would be great for Business and we’d be doing our bit towards the Nations productivity.
What do you think?