All the focus now is on productivity. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, national productivity has slipped to its second lowest level in 15 years. Then again, productivity is not the responsibility of workers. It’s up to managers and that’s the challenge for resellers. How do you achieve a better quality of work, complete less re-work, improve customer satisfaction, get a more motivated workforce, and improve management and staff relationships.?
They can start with some obvious things, the low hanging fruit.
Some of the most obvious - run better meetings, create more targeted reporting lines, make sure there is proper follow through and delegate better - are a good start.
The first and most obvious way to improve productivity is to change meetings which tend to waste a lot of time. As a rule, meetings should only be held if you go in with an outcome in mind; one that’s understood by everyone involved. Do that and the meetings will become more productive. Meetings need to be planned in advance and summarised at the end. It will become a more productive meeting if you have someone there taking notes. Every meeting needs to followed up and has to produce an action plan for what comes next. Again, that helps create more productivity. It is more productive to confirm the meeting the day before. Also, resellers should consider whether a meeting is even necessary. If a phone call or group email would suffice, they should do that instead.
Resellers wanting to become more productive also need to think strategically. What exactly do they need to tackle to become more productive? They need to work out their objectives, and communicate these down the line.
There is no point saying you want to lift productivity, that’s just too vague. Resellers would need to decide what they need to improve, by how much and by when. They would have to identify exactly how much output the company needs on a particular job, and how much it intends to reduce labour costs by. Everyone in the company needs to understand what they are trying to achieve, why they are doing it, how it will benefit the company and how it will improve their working conditions.
It is also important to look at the service or product in terms of the value stream, that is to say, all the steps that are taken to deliver it to the customer. That means looking at every step the company takes from raw materials to finished goods to get that product to the customer. It means you consider everything in that process and make sure that everything, from reporting lines to meetings, focuses on getting the product out. That will also mean that people from different departments will have to work together.
That in itself is a radical departure. Most companies have vertical silos, or departments. Companies like Toyota and Motorola have been the exception. They focus on value streams, what it takes to give the customers the goods that they want. Toyota and Motorola are often held up as models of productivity.
Another good idea for improving productivity is to look at management tools. Easily accessed, they include Six Sigma, mistake proofing, and lean visioning. The idea is for managers, proprietors and the work force to sit down and use these tools to identify trouble spots and areas that need attention.
It would also require setting up systems that will monitor production and tackle issues straight away. It means creating steamlined reporting lines, more effective delegating, bringing in company-wide key performance indicators and using the right metrics. An active management system develops more streamlined reporting lines. It creates accountability and follow through. And it also ensures that everyone knows what they’re doing, and that people have sufficient authority to delegate.
This requires not only bringing in company-wide KPIs to ensure productivity. It also means having the right metrics. Some resellers might look at their overtime bill at the end of each month. But if you do it each week or every day it means you can manage it daily or weekly rather than wait until the end of the month. When work goes through slow periods and when there is hold up in production, when customers are left waiting, there needs to be a system that monitors it and tackles it straight away.
An active management system is going and looking at things and looking at indicators during the time when the work is being done. Resellers should set themselves productivity targets of no more than six months. They would be better off biting off what they can chew rather than trying to set a long term vision where everyone will lose focus along the way. Companies need to develop systems that change behavior to drive productivity. This can be compared to Australian safety standards. In recent years, safety at Australian companies has improved beyond all measure because companies brought in systems that changed behavior. These days, for example, you don’t wait for someone to die because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The same can be done by setting up systems that make people more productive.
All this this requires work and attention. But when companies do it well, it seems to be hard-wired into their leadership and culture.
Leon Gettler is a senior business journalist who writes for a range of leading newspapers and journals
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