The Physics of Productivity

I spoke at SubCon to a senior exec in a top-line trade association. He told me that he sees predominantly positive cultures, but having been on a fair share in my time I quietly question what he's actually experiencing on site visits. Leaders will say that their culture is great; walking the shop floor may tell a different story.

If, that is, the guest is clued up to signs that 'all is not well' beyond seeing people doing their jobs at their workstations. Managers usually talk their way round the tour, so they're easily missed. On odd occasions an operative engages in conversation with the host - I can count that occurrence on the fingers of one hand.

The exec team want to take ownership of what they see as success (on the bottom line) but they are often reluctant to give credence to grass roots innovation that makes the difference between a cohesive culture and a dysfunctional one. The C-suite sprinkles token incentives, surveys and treats but they're not learning alongside their fellow humans what it actually means to be sustainably engaged. Keeping a distance means keeping subordinates in line - which according to trad values, is the only way to manage people... but these days, that style of management just backfires.

Communication, alignment, trust, and understanding = seminal features of the osmosis that must happen in order for a culture to engage. When the top floor is on an equilibrium with the shop floor in all these areas, miracles happen because they can. Operatives are trusting enough to open up and be heard on problems that are real to them, and execs are trusting that transparency and attention-to-need actually work, so collaboration gets an airing in reality - with visible effects.

I've spent 25+ years pushing the boat out on workplace welfare, and finally the tide is turning in the right direction. Many memes are flying around on what good leadership looks like and the figures on engagement from Harvard and Gallup speak for themselves - disengagement costs around £300billion in the UK alone while return on investment for people-centric strategies is £4-to-£1. The secrets to success, as my programmes have proved, involve bringing grass-roots staff into the advancement process while helping leaders to align with human needs in the way they manage the company - the two must be developed synchronously for any effect to be sustained. For engagement to become an integral part of operational methodology, all elements of the organisation (organism) have to advance at the same time.

Mission becomes aligned when benefits are apparent to everyone with a shared trajectory applied to the process of development, leading to a flow of communication that's fast and seamless, and to an understanding that if one fails, it's a not a break in the chain but an opportunity to learn (=continuously improve).

Roles become more familiar to more people sharing information more freely, with a resultant rise in skill set and collaboration; when employees understand the weaknesses collapsing the system through poor behaviour, they change those behaviours because they see a benefit in doing so - win-win situations are where those miracles suddenly come from. The new, positive energy from the mass gets transferred to the sales team and output explodes to meet fresh orders.

Just physics. Energy expended in stress, illness, and hidden down-time converted into proactive, positive productivity... Conservation of Energy says it has to be so, and some energies are more valuable than others.

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