Next, Let’s Stop Obsessing With Productivity

Instead, let’s each aspire to Effectiveness in our work.

Why do we feel the need to be productive in our work?

The Western obsession with productivity has its roots in Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic , which became solidified (some might say calcified) in the industrial revolution and Taylorism . That productivity narrative has infected much of modern work, and a relentless drive to be more and more productive: A 2019 study found that Americans work 390 hours more per year than they did only 30 years ago — nearly 10 weeks of additional work. But worker productivity growth statistics in America has essentially stayed flat during that entire time, implying that we’re running faster just to stay in place. (Or… are we measuring the wrong thing?)

More recently, the Great Reset of work has sparked endless speculation about the impact of flexible work on worker productivity. Are we more or less productive working from home ? If everyone is forced back into the workplace, will productivity increase?

Let's ask a different question. Why does this even matter?

Productivity can matter for the Individual (how productive each of us feels), for the Organization (how we’re rated on our productivity), and for an Economy (how we track ourselves as countries).

• For each of us as Individuals, if being productive gives us a sense of satisfaction, it can be positive stress , encouraging us to continually achieve more. But at its worst, stressing about productivity can lead to a range of personal and professional dysfunction.
• For the Organization, there are financial reasons to continually drive for greater worker productivity, for competitive advantage, and to give more value to shareholders. Yet that impetus encourages employers to roboticize work: By relentlessly pushing for greater and greater output, you get more widgets (or whatever the work product is) per person — and a far greater potential for worker burnout.
• Economists use productivity as a measure of output per unit (you knew you were a unit, right?), despite relentless criticism that traditional productivity measures simply can’t factor in how our lives and our work have changed through information technology (“The Productivity Paradox” ). (One economist thinks that pandemic-era productivity has fallen in the industries where the most people quit — in part because the people hired to replace them weren’t as experienced.)?But there is little agreement about what productivity looks like at a national level when widgets aren’t involved, and creative problem-solving is.

?I’m often quoted as saying to the workaholics of the world: “Remember that the reward for doing a lot of work is more work.” The push for productivity can be an arms race: Employers want more of it, workers deliver more, and employers want still more. In January 2021, a BBC article speculated that the pandemic might make many of us reconsider our obsession with productivity. But the march of headlines talking about the need for work-life balance seems to indicate that hasn’t happened for many of us. And the headlines on quiet quitting are in part a response to highly-mechanized work and the demand by employers for increasing amounts of work output, in the name of productivity.?

Remember that the reward for doing a lot of work is more work.

Sure, some work lends itself readily to the metrics of productivity. Boiler-room salespeople track their pace of calls and close rates. Support specialists watch the number of calls handled. Production-line workers count the number of widgets per hour. But what about a kindergarten teacher? A creative writer ? Why would productivity metrics matter for them? (“Productivity points ” for a hospice chaplain? Really?)

?At its best an interest in productivity helps people to agree on what’s expected of them. That’s where techniques like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs ) come in. But at its most toxic, it creates a culture obsessed with output, exalting “high performers” and routinely clearing out “low performers.” A Google employee is recently quoted by Insider saying that CEO Sundar Pichai maintained that the company's headcount “doesn't match its productivity” (which sounds like pure Taylorism). The same article quotes a Google Cloud sales head as writing that there will be an "overall examination of sales productivity and productivity in general," and that if next quarter results "don't look up, there will be blood on the streets."

If next quarter results “don't look up, there will be blood on the streets.”

?Though most studies tend to find that many workers have been as or more productive in the era of distributed work, many organizations have chosen to weaponize productivity. To ensure that remote workers are being productive, an increasing number of organizations use “tattleware ” monitoring software to watch everything from keyboard strokes to eye focus. (Does any executive who orders this software ever try it on themselves? Is that really the culture you want?)

That's creepy enough. But in “The Rise of the Productivity Score ,” the NY Times highlights a range of ways that software is being used to even further robotize work, by assigning scores that can influence compensation, promotions, and even firing.

In The Next Rules of Work , I call this Management By Surveillance. MBS is based on a lack of trust; this is why so few companies had work-from-home policies pre-pandemic. Robotized work has few benefits for the worker. Sure, everyone benefits from agreeing on their work goals, and from measuring progress toward meeting those goals. But turning workers into robots is heading in the wrong direction. We need to humanize work, not dehumanize it.

What if instead we focused on Effectiveness?

The mindset of Effectiveness can apply to any work situation. Each work role has a set of expectations associated with it, expectations that are ideally co-created between a worker and a team or team guide. Every work role has a different context for effectiveness. For example, in a restaurant a productivity mindset might be that a certain number of tables has to be waited on every hour (an activity that can be easily measured). But an effectiveness mindset could simply focus on having happy customers — the result that an employer should want. Which place would you rather work?

What if instead we focused on Effectiveness?

A workplace culture intent on Effectiveness would ensure that all workers have the necessary mindset (by being trusted by their team guide or manager), the required skillset (through training), and the appropriate toolset (by measuring what matters ).

So what should you do Next?

• For yourself as a worker, step back and question what productivity means to you. Is it a source of positive or negative stress in your life? What if, instead, you focused on what you need to be effective in your work? How would you think about your work differently — and how would you measure your own effectiveness?
• If you’re an employer focused on productivity, ask the fundamental question: Why? What if instead you co-created agreements with workers about what it takes for each person to be effective in their work — and ensured that your compensation structure encourages effectiveness?

?This isn't just a label change. It's a chance to leave behind one of the least human of the old rules of work, and embrace one of the most human-centric next rules.

-gB

Gary A. Bolles

I’m the author of?The Next Rules of Work: The mindset, skillset, and toolset to lead your organization through uncertainty . I’m also the adjunct Chair for the Future of Work for?Singularity Group . I have over 1.1 million learners for my courses on?LinkedIn Learning . I'm a partner in the consulting firm?Charrette LLC . I’m the co-founder of?eParachute.com . I'm an original founder of?SoCap , and the former editorial director of 6 tech magazines. Learn more at?gbolles.com