A public holiday might seem a strange time to be considering productivity. There again, maybe it is not. After all, sometimes you need to escape the hurly burly of the here and now to gain a clear sight of what needs to be done. This is especially true when it comes to that great issue of our time, the productivity crisis. It is likely that one of the reasons we cannot get a handle on this is that we cannot understand why there is a productivity problem when we are so busy being busy.
This argument is at the heart of the solution to the problem proposed by Andrew Filev, who founded the work-management business Wrike out of his avowed aversion to waste.
But first, the problem. Economists debate constantly over the extent and the causes of the issue. But, according to Filev, there are essentially two aspects to it -- the technological and the human.
The technological aspect arises out of all the promises made about the potential of Cloud-based apps and the rest. As Filev puts it, these should "theoretically make each one of us Superman or Superwoman." But in fact "when we come to work we don't feel superhuman. We feel overwhelmed." The reasons for this, he says, are that on the one hand it always takes both individual users and businesses a while to work out how to use technology really productively and that on the other businesses tend to be poor at joining up work. This is apparent in the problems that traditionally beset large IT projects, for example. Put simply, leaders need to become much better at connecting work so that any improvements are not stuck in functions but seen across the organization.
This lack of coordination is manifest in the human aspect of the problem. Often, says Filev, individuals can be working very hard and performing at a high level but do not see evidence of this in the overall performance of the business. This is a repeat of the sort of problem suffered in manufacturing a few years ago. They moved away from making individuals more productive and instead concentrated on making the wider system more productive. And the same needs to happen in offices, adds Filev.
But, rather than being worried about this, he is optimistic because he believes there is "a huge productivity source still untapped." While many worry about the impact on jobs of still more technology, Filev believes that the next generation of computing will help people move to higher-level work by doing more of the routine tasks that currently bog down many workers. Moreover, he is convinced that -- as in previous technological revolutions -- the effect will be to create new jobs.
While acknowledging that the process might be disruptive in the short term, such developments are usually more gradual than thought. Indeed, as he points out, some of the changes in the way that work is done are already happening. For example, it is not uncommon to see plumbers and other tradespeople using tablet devices to organize their work and even to take payments.
The key, however, will be to convince organizations to truly encourage and facilitate cross-team work, both through the introduction of technology and through the training and incentivizing of employees. That is something worth working on after the holiday.
