A Quick Note on Productivity

A weird, old-timey ad showing pastries cheerfully following a cup of coffee to their doom.

It seems that the general economic uncertainty is generating anxiety about productivity. And predictably, the blame is landing on workers and lower-level managers instead of with leadership where it belongs. Let’s be clear, many organizations are where they are because they got drunk on cheap money, short-term thinking, and confirmation bias. (Also, there's the matter of wishing the pandemic away, which is a particularly callous and deluded subcategory of short-term thinking.)

I can tell you from a couple decades in consulting that the more reactive, authority-driven, and petty the vibe is, the more of any given employee’s (or contractor’s or consultant’s) cognitive resources are devoted to surviving the culture, rather than actually doing the right work well. All summed up, the personal and collective costs are huge.

Twitchy, performative overwork is the opposite of what any organization needs to thrive in challenging times. But it's what's going to happen. Along with a tilt-a-whirl of reorgs.

Because we like to be helpful, here are a few actions that actually do improve productivity:

1. Take a pause before reacting

This is true at every level. Humans are emotional decision-makers. Especially the ones who loudly insist otherwise and tend to be in charge of the most consequential decisions. Maybe someone needs a sabbatical, or a day in the literal woods, but just enjoying a big breath while reflecting on your most proximate goal would go real far.

2. Get your communication in order

Internal communication is interaction design. It doesn't just happen without strong principles, goals, and intention. Nothing improves productivity like clarity, honesty, and mutual respect. (Can that Zoom be a voice call? I bet it can be a voice call. Let people pace! But not drive. No driving in meetings.)

3. Get your decision-making in order

Come up with a better working theory of how decisions get made than "the person with the most power is having a freak out". Most organizations have some sort of production process. Some indulge in ritualized collaboration. Few companies in the private sector have an explicit, consistent approach to making, signaling, and improving decisions, and it shows.

4. Get your information in order

Can't make good decisions if you don't have good information. Have you been relying on context-free metrics? Is your understanding of the world fragmented and fraught with availability bias? Do you have functional feedback loops? Are you asking the right questions? Is it even safe to ask questions or is everyone just participating in the agreed-upon fiction? That's where a whole pile of risk creeps in.

5. Get your incentives in order

You can't change habits without changing incentives. Be honest if you've been rewarding toxic shit, anti-collaborative behavior, or the most glamorous work instead of the most necessary to success. Make sure that you're making collaboration and teamwork pay off for everyone, and not just paying lip service.

6. Get your strategy in order

Yeah yeah. Culture strategy breakfast. That's why 1–5 are about working on the culture. In good times, a business can get real far without articulating a clear strategy and aligning around it. These are not those times. You can't tell which work is wasteful without understanding what actually creates value and for whom.

With the exception of breathing deeply before you type, tap, or speak, the above amounts to an ambitious series of ongoing projects. There's no quick fix. However, even incremental attention to clear communication, functional collaboration, and evidence-based decision-making will yield significant benefits pretty quickly.

An earlier draft of this post appeared on LinkedIn. Business business business.