5 common reasons for a lack of productivity

After I took my buyout plan from Kmart, I set out to figure out what I wanted to do in a new career. This was not an easy task for someone who'd spent 33 years in retail.

For weeks I scoured the unemployment ads in the newspaper and on the Internet. It rapidly became clear that finding a job that would support my family would be difficult -- if not impossible.

Soon I was thinking that the best road for me to go down would be to start my own business. I have enjoyed the last 10 years of my career working in the vendor development area at Kmart. They gave me the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals.

In particular, I liked speaking at seminars and in workshops where I would often see the faces of individuals who were finding some way to get greater satisfaction from their work with Kmart or to increase their sales with us.

Looking at potential companies I came across a customer service organization located smack dab in the middle of the country. I traveled to their headquarters to discuss the possibility of opening up a franchise. They had what seemed to be a great prescription for success, and I decided it would be a business I would enjoy. 

Just as I was about to make a commitment, I saw an ad for a leadership and strategy training company located in Texas. 

A few days later I found myself sitting on an airplane bound for Dallas. It was my intention to scope out this company, but my mind had already been made up to open the franchise from the company in Missouri. In fact, I had the signed franchise papers in my briefcase during the entire trip.

In Texas I met Chip, the owner of the leadership and strategy training company. 

Chip was an ordinary man with an unordinary ability to help people create a vision for their lives. He had walked away from a successful vice presidency to start his own company and fulfill a lifelong dream of owning a ranch in central Texas.

Chip’s outlook

Although Chip was not the first to formulate the position that as much as 99% of business revolves around people, he was the first to eloquently show me this truth.

Along with two gentlemen from Colorado, Chip had developed an entire curriculum of quality materials that could transform any company, large or small, into a high-performance operation.

The foundation of every product in Chip’s portfolio was people.

He did not talk about spectacular people with near to superhuman powers. He talked about ordinary people that could be challenged through leadership to deliver extraordinary results.

I spent the weekend with Chip and his people and was totally engrossed by what his organization had to offer. Sunday I headed back to the Dallas airport. While waiting for my flight I ripped up the franchise papers so that I could open a dealership offering Chip’s leadership products.

During this initial visit with Chip he shared the results of a well-publicized survey. Of employees taking part in the survey only 25% admitted they work as productively as possible. The survey showed that another 25% felt they could do 50% more while half of the workers surveyed openly admitted they could increase their productivity by an average of 26%.

A separate Gallup poll had the same conclusions from a different set of employees.

This is an excerpt from “Life’s Leadership Lessons” a collection of 53 anecdotal leadership lessons, each with an anecdote and the application of the topic in your everyday life. It is designed for use in weekly staff meetings or for personal development.

Five reasons for a lack of productivity

By examining the reasons given by the admittedly unproductive employees, one can quickly derive and implement low- or no-cost ways to connect employees for an improved bottom line The top five reasons for this lack of maximum productivity are:

1. Lack of supervision. 

There has been a trend in recent years to empower people by placing them in teams and letting the teams to self-manage their responsibilities. It is definitely true that this contemporary style of management improves results over traditional strict management.

Unfortunately, many companies have gone too far in removing supervision. Supervisors still have a strong role in setting goals, holding their people accountable, and providing the resources necessary to get the job done. These supervisory responsibilities require supervisor becomes a coach for each employee, having daily contact at a minimum.

2. Insufficient training. 

Many supervisors think that empowerment is nothing more than giving people the ability to make their own decisions. This thinking is far too simplistic for success. Giving people the ability to make their own decisions requires providing the education they need to make intelligent decisions. 

Fortune 500 companies have learned the value of training and almost all of them have ongoing training programs. Small and midsize companies often overlook the value of providing training in important people skills such as time management, problem solving, decision making, or communication.

3. Exclusion from the decision-making process. 

When was the last time you were excited that somebody made an important decision for you? You probably resented it. Most employees are no different: they do not want someone else deciding important aspects of how they do their jobs and meet their goals.

Including employees in the decision-making process is an important aspect in connecting them to a shared vision of your organization's future.

4. No reward for good performance. 

We all like to have acknowledgment for our accomplishments. Employees will be much more successful when you show appreciation for their efforts.

A common misconception to giving rewards is the belief that rewards should be monetary in nature. The truth is that employees crave specific verbal complements -- which are absolutely free to the employer.

5. No opportunity for advancement. 

Don't be tricked by this heading. We are not talking about reality here -- we are talking about perception. If employees do not feel they have an opportunity for advancement they will not connect to your organizational goals and visions. It's a simple absolute truth.

I worked with one organization that claimed they had absolutely no opportunities for advancement due to financial constraints. I wondered aloud how they were so sure nobody was going to quit, retire, or die. 

This company had fallen into the misconception that opportunities for enhancement needed to be immediate and constant. The opportunities offered by a company can be available anytime within the next five years. It is more important that opportunities exist than it is how quickly they can be realized.

So, you don’t think it applies to you

Not every company experiences a loss of performance to the same degree. Some organizations will suffer a greater loss while other organizations will find their employees better connected to the vision of their organization and their role in fulfilling that vision.

A separate survey revealed that in organizations where management felt their employees were the most connected and productive were typically the organizations where employees felt the least connected -- therefore having lower productivity.

Chip clearly understands the correlation between organizational results and well-trained, engaged employees. The lesson I learned from Chip enables me to see the connection.

This is an excerpt from “Life’s Leadership Lessons” a collection of 53 anecdotal leadership lessons, each with an anecdote and the application of the topic in your everyday life. It is designed for use in weekly staff meetings or for personal development.

About the author:

Rick Weaver has half a century’s experience in leadership development in retailing. He founded Max Impact Corporation, a leadership and business development consultancy company in 2002. His major accomplishments include working himself from stock clerk to director at a Fortune 50 retail chain and building a $40MM+ construction company in under 5 years. Today Max Impact offers staffing services as a franchisee of Patrice & Associates providing Executive Search, Management Recruiting, and Contract Staffing services.