Defining Productivity for the Knowledge Age
Productivity is a term you may hear on a daily basis but have you ever stopped to consider its meaning, especially within the context of knowledge work and knowledge workers? It probably isn’t what you think it is.
Promises of productivity increases frequently come from technology vendors in the course of promoting their offerings. Few, if any, appear to be able to explain exactly what they are promising, leaving one to wonder if one might therefore type faster, have more meetings, hold more efficient meetings, or write more memos and e-mail messages? In a more serious vein, however, this is a very serious question: what exactly do we mean when we use the “p” word?
In an industrial setting, defining productivity is simple; it’s how many widgets go flying out the factory door in a given period. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, defines productivity as “the rate at which goods or services are produced, especially output per unit of labor.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the term “output per man-hour” to indicate productivity. When applied to knowledge work however, it seems that all bets are off. So how exactly can one measure knowledge worker productivity in a quantitative fashion?
It took 150 years from the dawn of the industrial age until the beginnings of a management science began to develop. Unfortunately, there is little applicability of the industrial age’s management science to a knowledge economy setting. Indeed, today we are in the very early stages of developing a management science for the knowledge economy and it will probably be decades before we fully understand even what questions have to be asked. The wide range of tasks that knowledge workers undertake, combined with the fact that there are different levels of knowledge workers, ranging from those with a single skill to highly skilled workers who exercise independent thought and action most of the time, makes both the task of defining productivity and developing a management science somewhat tricky, to say the least.
We’ll continue to examine this topic in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or comments, please share them here.
Jonathan B. Spira is the CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.
February 26th, 2009 15:41
Jonathan,
I spent a lot of time on productivity and knowledge work in the 1990’s when I became the first CIO of Young & Rubicam, a global marketing and communications firm composed mostly of knowledge workers, and then CKO of a Y&R subsidiary, Wunderman.
Having information technology resources is pretty much a given these days. It wasn’t then. We had to persuade management to invest in IT, raising many of the issues outlined in your post. I was swept back immediately to a March 29, 1993 Viewpoint column I wrote for Computerworld.
I won’t say I’ve kept up with the topic in the last few years (I haven’t), but from your post, the four issues I identified then still seem pertinent:
Productivity Comes When We Carve Out New Realities
What’s that you say? You know the new world of client-server, PCs-for-all computing will increase your organization’s productivity but you can’t prove it? Your management wants return on investment when you’re talking increased customer satisfaction?
Welcome to the “productivity paradox.” It’s a simple proposition: companies in the service sector have poured billions into information technology for their white-collar knowledge workers, but the statistics show no change in productivity. Unfortunately, that’s not a lot of help when you’re presenting for this year’s investment budget.
There may be some hope. There seem to be four main issues that must be resolved:
o Measurement mismatch – Traditional performance metrics focus only on financial parameters and don’t take customer satisfaction or quality into account.
o Technology misuse – There is an unfortunate tendency for managers equipped with computers to divert their time to clerical tasks such as putting together presentations and fiddling around with type fonts. These frivolous activities negate time savings. Technology can be unsuitable, too. You wouldn’t run a worldwide airline reservation system on a network of PCs, but some people expect to support the flexible needs of a knowledge worker workgroup with a mainframe.
o Value confusion – Managing information technology doesn’t add value. Changes in process and structure produce additional value. Information technology assists that. Traditional manufacturing perspectives mislead knowledge worker productivity analyses because the process fundamentals are different: human interactivity, not machine interdependence. And things get worse when organizations don’t redesign themselves because new technologies such as LANs and WANs undercut command-control hierarchies.
o Using the wrong denominator – Organizational productivity happens at the workgroup level, not personal level, but we’re only beginning to think about information technology that way. And designers, manufacturers and vendors haven’t brought workgroup computing fully to market yet.
The prescription for these ills is straight-forward: Combine a process orientation with the right technology.
There’s the rub. And there’s the hope.
Mismeasurement is clearly a problem. We need to figure out what we’re trying to measure with current approaches. We also have to stop misusing technology and start changing skills, processes and organizational structure. Finally, we need the right technology for knowledge work. Virtually all of today’s technology reflects traditional computing, which grew out of a manufacturing paradigm.
Fortunately, the right technologies and the supporting web of changing culture, practices, and processes that make them work are beginning to show up, although you have to look closely. A common design characteristic centers on how human beings work with each other — what it is that we actually do when we say we are working and how we interact with one another.
As technology designed for the processes of knowledge workers displaces technology designed for manufacturing, those elusive productivity increases will materialize.
Nick Rudd
February 27th, 2009 10:21
[...] Does "doing more with less" make you more productive? I’d say yes, given the classic definition of productivity. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, defines productivity as “the rate at which goods or services are produced, especially output per unit of labor.” But in the information economy, it’s a little trickier to measure. We’re simply not producing widgets. Jonathon Spira, CEO and chief analyst at Basex, is just starting a series of blogs on the challenges in defining productivity for the knowledge age. [...]
February 27th, 2009 21:06
It never ceases to amaze me how thinkers in this space consistently miss the trees for the woods. The single key reason for loss of personal (and by extension, enterprise) productivity in the modern white collar workforce is that the primary electronic habit that these people occupy is their email. The design of email software encourages people to “Send-Receive-File” and places irrelevant intellectual engagement on the management of an overload of insignificant information. If the modern email client interface were designed from a ‘what’s my next action’ perspective (we chose Ditch, Deal, Delegate, Decide – the fabled 4Ds of GTD and Stephen Covey-land) allowing people to manage the work they actually have to do as a result of their interactions with their primary workplace communication tool, then productivity would soar. Instead, workers treat their email as a never-ending one dimensional rolling to-do list which gives them no sense of order or priority as to how they should be spending their time. Want to improve productivity at work? Simple – empower people to make and record the results of their decisions with an easy to use email client interface. Then measure the resulting time spent on tasks and in appointments, and fine tune from there.
February 28th, 2009 15:34
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March 1st, 2009 13:44
Agree with your 4D. It’s what’s between the ears (the professionals ability to think smart and move fast that determines that professionals ability to deliver the right result at the right time. No matter the email system. One can get lost and confused in just about any tool. It’s when a strong, reliable and continually functioning thought process and set of practices is brought by the professional to the email tool – or blackberry – that’s when productivity can be leveraged. Imagine what can happen when no only you, but you and your colleagues – and maybe your organization brought this to the table! Imagine the creativity, truly strategic decisions, ability to see what’s on the horizon (anticipate) and quality of work that would get done. It’s an essential for these days & times.
April 22nd, 2009 21:41
[...] overload and other stuff relating to productivity in the modern economy. I commented on their blog recently. Worth a read. Share and [...]