Frequently Busy, Infrequently Productive

These people hide among us lurking around the water fountains with coffee cup in hand waiting for the next TPS report. Or more recently getting on the Zoom meeting in time to not be first but not necessarily last either so as to not be noticed. They are in our meetings, on our teams, and unfortunately, talking to our customers. They create glorious power points and send wonderful emails late into the evening or very early morning to prove how busy they are. We are often impressed by their work ethic, the hours they put in, and their busyness. They are always nose down working on some fantastic project but if we stop and measure what is actually produced, we are flabbergasted by the vacuum of nothing. It should be a simple equation, activity equals production but this equation is not absolute. In business the exception is greater than the rule. We have all seen it. You have known that person exists and since they work so much it has been difficult to put your thumb on it but after reading this you will be aware, you will notice it and be able to call it what it is, sometimes activity is just activity; frequently busy, infrequently productive.

In my attempt to understand a group of employees production I observed and heard how slammed this group of middle managers were. I was amazed by the hours logged by the number of people at this particular management level, but I could not understand what they did. Its not that I could not understand their activities, I was well aware of the activities. I simply could not identify their product. I know they worked hard but they yielded little production. I requested their manager update the original job description to represent what they did currently. You will remember from past writings of mine I am a job description type of leader, not so much a job title type of leader. What you do is more important to me than what you are called. People focus on “I am” and should focus on “I do”. Apologies, I regress, back to my story; after a few days I was presented the job description for this group of middle managers and the first thing on the job description was…”answer email”. I was speechless. Well, actually I was not. I went off the rails. This one line sent me into an hour lecture miniseries on the difference between activity and production. I only read the rest of the job description for the humor at this point. We had a meeting (another mostly meaningless activity) to discuss not the activities but what the end goal was for their respective areas to manage. I steered the meeting to allow only those things that we produced to be discussed and not the activities it took to produce them. Once the production was defined, we then asked and answered what we needed to do (activities) in order to yield the production. Answering email never came up as a tasks that yielded the desired production. It was a byproduct of the activities and assisted in communication, but it never made it back on the job description.

In business operations identifying each departments production is simple. Since the business operates around people, product, process and marketing; the productions need to compliment the operations.

Therefore, an employee’s production falls into one of the following areas.

1.      It makes our product better, yielding - more customers, retain customers

2.      It makes our people better, yielding - more customers, retain customers

3.      It makes our process better, yielding - more customers, retain customers

4.      Marketing, yielding - more customers, retain customers

If you cannot trace an employee’s activities back to getting more customers or keeping more customers then what are they doing? I am sure they are busy but busy isn’t necessarily productive. I can hire people and measure tasks but unless those tasks don’t point to production then you have burdened the company. It might be time to lighten the load.

It’s a mistake to have a job description and only lists tasks the job requires. Job descriptions need to say what needs to be done as well as why it needs to be done. It’s the end product we want and the Human Resource Department (or whoever) can create professional job descriptions but if you only include what to do then the employee will be busy but may never know why. Once an employee understands why they will create a better what. Allow me to restate this, once an employee knows their individual product they will create activities that produce their product in ways the Human Resource Department would of never concluded. If you box people in it takes a rebel to get out and these days in corporate America rebels get terminated even when they are right. (see my past article, The Situation)

I once had a mentor that kept saying, “David, I know why people do what they do, I simply don’t understand why they do what they do”. To this day I still don’t know what he meant by this, but it stuck with me and my interpretation of this is, “don’t get stuck in busy, get busy on production”.

Folks, why do you do what you do? Are your activities directed at you being a productive employee or do your activities keep you busy so your boss sees how busy you are? If you have a short-sighted boss then you can have a fruitful career full of promotions by being busy. If you boss is a big thinker, then this may be your problem. You think your boss wants busy but what he is trying to measure isn’t busy, its production, and you might have very little to display. Your calendar is full of meetings and phone calls but your shelves are bear, you have no product. If you are an Email Jockey or a Powerpoint Pirate and not making product better, process better or people better you will only go so far.

Some of my best criticism in my career has been, “you don’t answer email”, my response is simple, I am producing and I answer emails for the purpose of production not to be seen busy with a timestamp of 2 am so everybody knows I am working all the time. Yes, people do that, you know who you are and so do good leaders.

So Powerpoint Pirates and Email Jockeys, why do you do what you do? We know why you do what you do, we just don’t understand why you do what you do. Its time to identify your product that advances the company’s objectives and adjust your activities accordingly.

Frequently busy, infrequently productive no more. Get busy, being productive.

Leave Nothing to Chance,

David