Jason Langford-Brown, CEO & Coaching Psychologist – The Director’s Circle
As a leader, the answer to this question is simple, all three. When you dig a little deeper however, where the really big wins are and how that has changed in recent times is surprising. If we want, or even need to be more productive, this is something we need to get to grips with, quickly.
Productivity is a well-known challenge. Even the UK government has a name for it, “The Productivity Puzzle”. As part of solving the challenge, they have for many years, tracked productivity, as in fact do many other nations.
Here’s the thing… after the global crisis of 2008, productivity began to decrease and even in more recent times, it has rarely increased or when it has, was well below the levels of before 2008. So, in an era of huge technological advancement, we are less productive. For balance, it is not an equal story globally, the UK is not the worst, but many are better, and this is something we can’t ignore.
I’ll come clean early – people are where the biggest opportunity is. Even Toyota, with its pedigree for process improvement and technological advancement has spotted it. Many will be familiar with their 7 Wastes model that has enabled the identification of potential productivity gains. This model has been adopted by all industry sectors in every continent yet what most don’t know, is that Toyota have added an eighth.
The Eighth Waste is “Unrealised or Untapped Potential”, in people. That’s not to say that they have de-focussed from process and technology, they just realise that after decades of working on these, the percentage gains are just nowhere near that of un-locking the potential in the people they have.
Let’s look at the three areas of process, technology and most importantly people to explore your opportunities for significant productivity gains:
Process
Process is your foundation. It’s how you ensure you replicate best practice for both the efficiency and effectiveness of any task. People are imperfect, so having a process to follow can help us be more consistent. Surprisingly, most businesses have little or no transparency of their processes, if they exist at all.
If they do, there is often poor adherence and accountability to them. Here’s the opportunity – mapping your processes or how you currently work, will uncover lots of opportunity to streamline where you are over engineering or duplicating effort.
This is not a Technology exercise, but it will give you a foundation for embracing technology as it will give you a blueprint for what you want to automate rather than continually flexing your business to fit another piece of software.
Technology
A few years ago, University California Berkeley published some research on Technology adoption retrospectively between 1985 & 2015 and what it would be, when looking forward from 2015 to 2035. The results were surprising to say the least.
Despite the obviously huge shift from a Mad Men world in the 80’s to something quite similar to where we are today in 2015, it was suggested that only a 1% adoption had occurred and that we would see the remaining 99% up to 2035.
This may feel unbelievable, but when you reflect on the reason, that we spent those first 30 years developing and not adopting, it makes sense. 2015 to 2035 is all about applying these technologies into more and more daily activities and we can already see it, in AI for example.
So, what’s the opportunity here? Well, first of all if you are not leaning into technology, making it an integral part of your strategy and accepting pretty much all companies are becoming Tech Companies, you’ll have a problem sooner or later.
For many however we are leaning in, so why is productivity down? In my opinion it’s because we are adopting technology for technology’s sake and not as a well thought out continuous improvement of our business. See also Process as a foundation, above.
People
Let’s now get to the big one, People. Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers asked a question in her landmark leadership book “How many of you would agree that the vast majority of our people possess more capability, creativity, talent, initiative and resourcefulness than their current jobs allow or even require them to use?”
Now I’ve asked this question to hundreds of leaders, and none have disagreed, so why aren’t we tapping into this unrealised potential? This probably needs more than this article to answer conclusively, but I can share with you the 4 headline factors that we use to achieve exactly that.
1. The Need For Direction
If we are going to unlock potential, we first need to clarify; to do what, be what and why? Without this we have no context or point of reference for our future efforts. Things to consider here are; do they have a vision or dream that they are trying to realise, what is their purpose, do they have some specific goals and is there a plan?
2. Having The Necessary Capability
This is a real banana skin for business leaders because we often confuse someone’s capability with competency, and they are not the same. Competency is no more than the acquisition of the knowledge or, I now know what to do. The world is now full of highly educated individuals who know what to do but cannot execute it in role.
The reason is because capability goes beyond the knowledge into the ability to do it through a journey of application, experiment, failure and feedback. Make sure you distinguish between the two and develop people’s capability not just competency. This is why traditional training often does not deliver significant improvement.
3. Having The Necessary Capacity
If we need to do something more, or better, we need the time. How does the individual make the time? how do we as leaders give them time? and finally, do they want to find the time? which takes us straight to the final point. Before we go there however, think about this in two ways; 1. Are they well time managed? 2. Do they have the physical and mental energy to do what they need to do?
4. Having The Motivation
This is a tough one but probably where most of the answers lie. You might want to simplify it to “Do they want it?” There is so much that I see under this heading as a Coaching Psychologist that I can’t possibly cover it here, but the following pointers will get you started on looking for the answers;
Are they even wired for what they/you want them do?
Do they have a positive and growth mindset?
Does it fit with their core values?
Does it fulfil their needs and/or have significant consequences if not?
Do they have confidence from having made some progress already?
Do they have self-awareness?
How do they feel about change?
Do they have good habits?… I could go on but I’m sure this is enough food for thought for now.
In summary, productivity gains will continue to come from Process, Technology and People. After years of process improvement and technology adoption however, the greatest gains may come from your people. If you want to release the un-tapped potential in your people, ensure there is Direction, Capability, Capacity & Motivation. If you can’t meet all these criteria with an individual, find a new one.
Jason Langford-Brown
CEO & Coaching Psychologist, The Director’s Circle
07860-575593
jlb@directors-circle.com