Is the Pursuit of Productivity Steering Us Wrongly?

In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published "The Principles of Scientific Management," a manifesto that would shape the industrial world for decades. Taylor's time-and-motion studies (Taylorism) promised to boost productivity by breaking work into its simplest components. While his methods delivered on productivity, they also drew criticism for reducing workers to mere cogs in a machine, prioritizing efficiency at the potential expense of worker satisfaction and creativity. Workers became human gears in a meticulously engineered system, churning out widgets with mechanical precision. Notably put into practice by Henry Ford and Milton Hershey, to name a few.

There is no doubt we became productive!

But I wonder if we've merely swapped our stopwatches for productivity apps, still chasing the ghost of Taylorism.

I'm not here to dump on productivity. I've spent countless hours fine-tuning my to-do lists and optimizing calendar blocks. Lately, I've been wrestling with a nagging suspicion that our obsession with productivity might be leading us astray and thus hindering the results of our work.

Productivity is all about the "doing." It's a numbers game. Fifteen tasks completed in rapid succession? Productivity win! Extinguishing fires all day, productivity win! But productivity doesn't distinguish between the trivial and the transformative work. With productivity we risk becoming highly efficient at doing things that don't really matter. In this sense, productivity is an equal opportunity enabler, just as happy to help you clear your inbox as it is to support you in taking care of other’s emergencies.

The question we should be asking is; "Am I being effective?" Now that's a question that gets you thinking. It requires reflection before answering. It forces us to consider the quality and impact of our work, not just its volume.

Is this task a true priority?

Am I the best person to handle it?

Could it be delegated?

Is it the highest and best use of my time?

These aren't easy questions. They demand a level of introspection that can be downright uncomfortable. It's much simpler to celebrate crossing items off a to-do list than to question whether those items should have been on the list in the first place.

What might our days and weeks look like if we pivoted away from productivity to effectiveness? No, this is just a play on words; this isn't a matter of semantics. New York Times best-selling author and business consultant Jim Collins has long said success comes from having "the right people, in the right seats, doing the right things, right." Take a moment and really digest that; "doing the RIGHT THINGS, RIGHT." He didn't say success comes from keeping your people busy with tasks that don't move the needle.

Effectiveness pushes us to confront the "why" behind our actions. It requires us to align our efforts with our most important goals and values of the company. Alignment is crucial; because it's the difference between being busy and being effective, along with impactful. Effective aligned work should make us feel focused and purposeful because we are lined up with the mission of the company; and that of our teams.

When we are granted a moment to reflect on our time spent, I doubt we'll measure our lives by how many emails we answered or meetings we attended, but by the impact we had on the world around us. Stop asking, "How can I fit in more productivity?" and start asking, "How can I be more effective?" Trade your productivity obsession for a commitment to effectiveness. After all, what good is a well-oiled machine if it's heading in the wrong direction?