Curing the Productivity Problem in our New Covid World: 9 Steps to Bridge the Gap

Teachers torture kids, maybe even you, with questions like this.

 Q1.  If it takes one person two days to dig a hole, how long does it take 
      three people?

And getting the correct answer meant you were definitely wrong. You good kids would answer, thrusting your hands in the air, "Two thirds of a day!" I would ask shyly, embarrassed at not getting it, "Please miss, 'How big is the hole? Can they all work on it at the same time? Are their actions dependent on each other or independent? Do they have equivalent skills? Is there scope for innovation? Do they all have the same working hours each day?'" I suffered for my impertinence.

With knowledge work or creativity the 'productivity-problem' with becomes even more intractable. Productivity was originally conceived as a useful measure of benefit per (human) effort. But now, does thinking up a creative solution to a problem at work, whilst you are in your kitchen cooking, count in the time or not?

Productivity is harder to define

We still need to have a sense of progress. Are our efforts delivering better or not? We need this at a personal level, an organisational level, as a nation and even as a world struggling to become sustainable. Are we being more 'productive'?

My shorthand is that Value (defined by the person delivered to) is the Benefits they get minus the Costs (financial and non-financial). Being more productive leads to an increase in the Benefits or a reduction in the Costs.

Taking a long view, productivity in western economies has been on a downward sled-run since the 1970s. As long ago as 1997 the OECD and the US Bureau of Labour Statistics bulletins have charted this. As the transition from manufacturing to service-based jobs (which are less scalable and automated) progressed productivity fell. In the UK, Innovate UK sought my advice on the very tricky problem of closing the UK's productivity gap, so I know first-hand that this is a real concern.

Leading and managing groups of knowledge workers to deliver much more complex tasks and projects in the past decade has been another challenge. Forbes research showed that 36% of a manager’s time was spent in meetings and only 39% of meetings achieved their objectives. 

And now we have #covid.

We now know that in a post-covid world we will have to meld together location based working and remote working.

#Covid forced remote working and physical distancing. In particular it has broken businesses and industries which relied on packing people in like sardines; airlines, theatres, restaurants. It has decimated businesses which relied on the old tradition of moving people to the work or activity rather than moving the work to the people; the energy sector, coffee shops, lunchtime snack-bars and take-away restaurants, formal and office clothing, car parking, office real estate.

In one quick move #covid shouted loud to point out to all of us that the Emperor had no clothes. Our traditions, untested assumptions, insistence that people couldn't work unless they were face-to-face were swept away. C-suite executives have been amazed at how well their organisations have coped. And according to Gartner many (74%of CFOs) intend to do more in future. It is now impossible to deny that much of what we thought and did pre-covid was actually already obsolete and a pointless ritual.

We have coped but have we been productive? A recent study by Nick Bloom, Professor of Economics, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy was hailed as the first randomised test to show that remote working could actually boost productivity - by 13%. The study was of call centre workers.

Remote working increases productivity ~13% (20%). For many though they are more productive because they are just working longer hours!

Unfortunately, for most of us this will not apply. Have you never worked all night and weekend only to have a co-worker mess up and result in the whole team not delivering? For the vast majority the value we deliver does not depend on our actions only. We are part of teams and networks which pull together to deliver. That's why we can't extrapolate the research result above in the hope we will gain in productivity.

 Q2.  What determines the rate of value delivery? 
      
      Is it:  

      A. The strength of the intention  

      B. The rate of inputs  

      C. The creativity of the process 

      D. The bottleneck in the system which could be anywhere 

      E. The rate of output

If only a single individual is needed to deliver the result the bottlenecks are typically a lack of skill, knowledge, attention, motivation, tools, environment or capability. Sometimes what gets in the way are poor skills of engagement or a 'command and control' pointy-haired boss. To increase productivity just directly address these. For many people going remote forced clearer engagement and got the pointy haired boss out of the way leading to an increase in attention, motivation and productivity.

However when we look beyond the individual, if teams or networks are needed in order to deliver, the bottleneck could still be a single individual in which case the remedy above applies. More likely it is difficulty in collaboration, ego's and poor team dynamics, lack of culture or methods to enable a diverse team, lack of processes or common methods spanning the team. So far challenges these have been difficult to address with a dispersed workforce.

At a process level it may be the decision cycle of meetings, or variability in certain steps of a process or poor project coordination. Diagnosing these politically sensitive bottlenecks is intensely difficult so far with our low experience of this new remote way of work.

At an enterprise or organisation level the bottleneck could be the inability to respond to the new world or even budgeting and funding mechanism. Our covid coping methods and tools are not really set or capable of the transformation this requires to resolve. Who hasn't become a 'zoombie' several times a week?

 Q3. What was your fondest memory of #covid lockdown and disruption?

     A. Zoom/Teams fatigue after eight straight hours staring at a 4 X 5 grid of    
        foreheads or up people's nostrils and listening to dogs barking

     B. Working longer hours-even more than commuting time as you had to do the 
        real work after the conference calls have ended and on top of that being 
        expected to respond 24*7

     C. Feeling a horrible, cold sense of isolation, disconnection and loneliness
    
     D. Praying for a decent length webinar where you could go on mute and do 
        something useful with your time

     E. Having to put up with the terrible broadband at home and the cramped 
        workspace you have to share with your other half 

If you survived #covid disruption then you, like all of us, simply went forward with what you had available at the time or you felt could be implemented fast! Second generation collaboration platforms and tools which were never intended to be used on their own, unsupported by a face-to-face office environment, became the standard.

There was no time to swap culture to a trusting, empowering, interdependent culture so the existing risk averse, political factions were just carried over.

There was no time to learn new processes or ways of working so the old 9 O'clock briefing or Wednesday stand-up just got recreated on Teams.

And there was no time to fit or retrofit equipment so living spaces designed for lounging and eating became poorly designed places for sitting and staring at tiny laptop screens with poor posture.

The second generation software tools we are using are ineffective for delivering the new learning needed or providing a sense of cohesion, so our issues remain hard to rectify and all the while your organisation culture unravels.

Three months later physiotherapists are in high demand, and mental health professionals report increased enquiries.

Employers, who in the UK, have a duty of care for safety face the terrifying challenge of ensuring psychological safety for a returning workforce many of whom may refuse to return. They will have to deal with the meld of office based and remote work.

You will need a new place to work that everyone can get to easily

You will need a new culture at work that involves everyone fairly

You will need a new way to work that boosts your productivity, creativity, innovation and engagement

The idea of a 'Digital Twin' has been around for some time. Digital Twins are exact replicas of the workplace created in virtual reality. But the last thing you are seeking is to reproduce the culture and ineffectiveness of your pre-covid world.

Imagine if you will, that you follow these 9 Steps to Bridge the Gap between your old normal and the high productivity next normal:

1. DON’T FIGHT THE NEW WAR WITH OLD TOOLS: Identify what specific aspects of tools, platforms and methods are still relevant. Break habits and minimise obvious solutions. Abandon second generation software 'collaboration tools'. Look for ways which make collaboration easier and more fluid the more demanding you are
2. SELECT A COLLABORATION 'ENVIRONMENT' OR 'WORLD': Look for a virtual environment which enables a full team collaboration experience which feels like being in the same room 
3. UNPLANNED INTERACTIONS AND STIMULATION: Recreates the natural “informal” interactions that come from a shared coffee, seeing someone in the lunch room or from sharing a workspace
4. MANAGE 'THE MELD' - REMOTE AND OFFICE MUST BE A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD (The Fourth Dimension 4D): Has an immersive ‘blended’ experience where if some people are physically present and other people are remote. The experience is exactly the same in terms of inclusivity, collaboration and interaction
5. WHAT IS IN IT FOR ME? Appropriately incentivise or provide allowances that truly enable people to be recompensed for using their home space as an extension of the office. Provide them with kick-ass equipment, a fully ergonomic workplace supporting the work and collaboration
6. PRODUCTIVITY AIMED/VALUE FOCUSSED/CUSTOMER CENTRIC: Empowers and engages our people like never before – freeing them to spend time on customer impacting activity, while providing support, interaction and collaboration with colleagues like never before
7. SUPPPLIER/CUSTOMER/PARTNER FRIENDLY: Links to the huge opportunity of the gig economy to ensure that all partners, big and small, have the same opportunity for being immersed in seamless collaboration
8. UNIFIED, DIFFERENTIATED AND PERSONALIZED: Ensures inclusion and the power of diversity. That the same experience and opportunity is a reality for our associates, external partners, customers and everyone
9. SUSTAINABLE AND PLANET FRIENDLY: Delivers a massive impact on our sustainability and CSR goals

Just 9 steps

Have I missed anything out? I don't think so. Have you arrived in your productive new world? I have used these steps myself.

For my leading edge clients and for Pentacle, my boutique Business School, we live and work on QUBE. 

The simple, gender-neutral avatars encourage involvement and inclusion. And having your own avatar or qubot as we call them, means you are free to wander at will. You don't need a permission-slip or to wait for the 'meeting to start' before you can engage with co-workers. It is such a relief and escape from the old world, small-minded mindset of control.

QUBE culture is designed to get past the friction of egos. This means that it allows your teams to de-bottleneck. Learning and skilling-up is built in which means individual performance will not hold you back. The open collaborative atmosphere encourages resolving prickly political issues so that the overall organisation or enterprise can be productive. And the drive to innovation that allows the organisation to transform effectively means that your productivity is limited by opportunity only.

By now you have had many months of working remotely and using the restrictive second generation collaborative tools. Now ask yourself when was the last time you:

• Lay on your back on the cool grass, gazing at cotton wool clouds drifting past on a blue sky whilst you reflected on performance KPIs with a co-worker?
• Said hello to 20 colleagues on the way to your office?
• Bumped into a colleague in the café whilst you were having your tea break and were able to share an idea?
• Laughed out loud spontaneously? Or jumped for joy?
• Left a 2-hour session feeling totally buzzing and energised?
• Not had to create a slide deck because your boss was able to walk around your project room (qubicle), understand what you’d done and left you precise constructive comments?
• Developed a full business case for a difficult project with the key people in 15 minutes? 
• Found your email box empty of internal emails because all the important work had only one version of the truth you all contributed to?
• Were able to resolve a two-minute query in two minutes instead of a one-hour call?

Each campus has many places to work, learn and laugh. You create “ONE” CULTURE, a culture which supports people, performance and productivity. Your coffee breaks will probably be spent gazing up at a blue sky, brainstorming with co-workers, as the clouds spin by. 

 Q4. If it takes three people one day to dig a hole, how long does it take the 
     whole organisation to dig half a hole?

Prof Eddie Obeng

@EddieObeng

Pentacle

The Virtual Business School-on-QUBE