News from the attic: The new productivity challenge

Peter Drucker is always worth quoting and this month’s featured article is “The new productivity challenge”, which appeared in Harvard Business Review in November 1991. He makes the point that the massive increases in manufacturing productivity instigated by Taylorism in the late 19th century, although loathed by organised labour, radically improved living standards and thereby headed off class war and social revolution. Those increases in productivity have continued but manufacturing and primary industries are only a small percentage of economic activity; there are increasing numbers of knowledge and service workers. A similar revolution is therefore needed to increase productivity in those industries. (And it is interesting that the focus of current political interest in the UK is the productivity of the public and health sectors, which is similarly arousing strong passions).

Drucker’s recipe for improvement consists of five steps:

1. Define the task. Ask what it is to accomplish and indeed whether it needs doing at all.
2. Concentrate on the task. Remove low value activities that divert from it.
3. Define what constitutes good performance.
4. Ask the people involved what they think can be done to improve productivity.
5. Build continuous learning into the organisation through training and getting the best performers to become teachers for the rest.

And for us as a training organisation it is interesting that Drucker says that we should learn from Japanese zen: “the greatest benefit of training comes not from learning something new but from doing better what we already do well”.

Calvert Markham