by Gary Mintchell | Aug 25, 2023 | Productivity
Managers drilled productivity concerns into me from the beginning of my official work life. One year while I attended university I was the “curtain hanger” in final finish department of Airstream, the manufacturer of high quality recreation vehicles. The goal was not only how many trailers made it out the back door per day but how many quality trailers made it out the back door every day.
About half of my career was devoted to manufacturing of one sort or another. Even when I transitioned into the media market as a senior editor the question was how many articles written and how many news items posted. And, of course, how many advertisers mentioned.
I have ruined so many mental cycles and time searching for the optimum set of digital tools for my media and writing career over the past 25 years. Yes, cybernetic (digital) productivity did me no great favors.
On one hand, I’ve been able to do so many jobs that wouldn’t have been possible prior to digital tools. On the other hand, much time was wasted playing around with all the tools looking for something that worked.
Translated: I can do important things that I couldn’t have before. I can not feel as if I’d done more things than before.
I listen to Cal Newport (Deep Work, World Without Email, Digital Minimalism) Deep Questions podcasts every week. First thing Monday. A month ago, his essay lead in concerned thoughts on The Failure of Cybernetic Productivity.
Paraphrasing—cybernetic productivity, using digital technology, have put us in a bit of a gerbil wheel where new things get thrust upon us to do at a faster and faster pace until the buffer holding work to do approaches infinity.
There is an old Pogo cartoon where the character says, “The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get.” That fits many of us today.
The important part a human (that’s us) plays in this story is to stop and think and determine what we should be working on. What is the best use of our time? Then, we can use digital technology for search and research and storing ideas and writing and communicating. It’s not that we let digital technology shove a whole lot of stuff at us and then we think. That would be too late.
I keep thinking that this cybernetic productivity people write articles about should be viewed like my first manufacturing job. How many quality tasks did we accomplish? What impact did we have on the success of the organization and our success? That’s what is important. Counting finished widgets is one thing. Counting reports? Not so much. Determining impact? That is all the importance for knowledge workers.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 18, 2023 | Leadership, Productivity
Executives, especially in Silicon Valley, have been on a concerted campaign to force their remote workers to return to the office. A few academic and/or journalist writers have tried to provide support by pointing to “studies” that show that when people work together they are more productive. On the other hand, there are studies (see links below) that show the opposite.
I recently listened to an interview with a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants employees in the office three days per week. The reason—meetings. He thinks meetings are great. And looking at the “Brady Bunch” gallery of faces unsettles him. He needs to focus on one face at a time.
I have always found meetings inherently unproductive wastes of time. Maybe if everyone is in the office impromptu one-on-one meetings have some value. But, those also interrupt one or both people from the thought work they need to be doing.
I also listen to Jason Fried and David Heinemeier-Hansson of 37 Signals and Michael Sliwinski of Nozbe and recently game developer Justin Gary. All run thriving companies with no office. Fried and Sliwinski have written books on the success of remote work.
The purpose of this recent movement is really control. Managers who do not know how to lead rely on control mechanisms to keep track of employees. I had a boss once whom I informed that I was going to spend more time working from home. “Well, as long as you’re working,” he replied.
How would you even calculate most knowledge worker productivity? Number of reports per week? Number of quotes sent per day? Projects per month?
People making things must be where the things are being made. And the number of cars or barrels or bottles can be counted. But reports? For the most part, who cares? Who reads them?
Productivity is nonsense in the knowledge worker domain. More important are impact and effectiveness. Peter Drucker saw this 40 years ago.
Questions for us:
What impact have you had on the success of the business or organization today?
How effective was your latest initiative for improving workflow?
These unfortunately cannot always be easily measured with a number. But everyone knows your impact and effectiveness. And for most, that doesn’t being chained to a cubicle. After all, how many CEOs are in the office every day? And how many are flying around the globe every week?
A good article from Forbes on the myths of productivity.
A study on knowledge worker productivity.
Measuring and Improving Productivity
Harvard Business Review, Knowledge Workers More Productive from Home
From Microsoft, new performance equation in the age of AI
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 30, 2023 | Productivity
From my newsletter a couple of weeks ago.
What is productivity in this age, not only in manufacturing, but also in knowledge work? Do the old rules still apply? And, above all, how can we bring humanity into the workplace?
Seth Godin has written many books worth your time reading. His latest book, Song of Significance, is packed with thoughts that both inform and prod into action.
His themes according to my reading include bringing humanity into the workplace, doing work that is significant, meaning creating meaningful change.
My wife was discussing Facebook and other social media and why they all keep developing ways to capture your attention–not always in a good way (seldom in a good way). She asked why they do it. I told her it was to maximize income. It has nothing to do with serving people. In fact, people are their product. They sell people’s attention to advertisers.
Godin responds in this book as he has consistently in his books on marketing that the goal is providing useful goods and services to people. You win by serving.
I told my wife that in my career I’ve been in numerous meetings where the subject is how to increase sales. Only a few were about how to create a better product for our customers and prospects. One consumer products company I worked at for about a year 40 years ago still has product recalls. I’m not surprised. The culture hasn’t changed (even though the name has) in all this time.
Culture defeats strategy.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about productivity. Industry pundits have bemoaned that productivity as defined classically (output per hour worked) has not grown. You can define productivity in manufacturing by how many widgets per hour. But even there, perhaps they should look at how many good widgets per hour.
But for knowledge workers (whose number can and should include trades people as well as desk workers) how do you define productivity when so much work involves working with other people? And generating good ideas? And developing good ideas into businesses. These things are not instantaneous rates of change. Trash the calculus and look at statistics as a model.
Get this latest Seth Godin book. Read it, then read it again. Mark it up. Keep it on your desk.
You can check out my thoughts on recent Siemens Digital, Hexagon, and Honeywell Process conferences on my business blog. For my thinking on personal growth and development, check out this website.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 27, 2023 | Personal Development, Productivity
Some economists and journalists looking for a passing story bemoaned statistics revealing a lack of productivity increase over a stated period of time.
Is this really a problem?
Whatever your job, whether in a business or church or other organization, do you feel that you have productivity metrics?
- Number of meetings attended
- Number of memos sent
- Number of articles written
Maybe what is more important is fewer meetings that actually accomplish an objective. Maybe it is effective communication that clearly explains or motivates change. Maybe something written with more depth and less gloss.
Are you working on a really big and juicy problem? Those take time to solve. That may not look good on your productivity chart. It may be really important work.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 27, 2023 | News, Productivity, Software
I’ve discussed digital thread technology and use a couple of times this month. Here is a company called Authentise for whom this is a specialty. They say that its new Authentise Threads product provides unique work thread collaboration that empowers R&D and industrial engineering teams to flexibly speed up, track and integrate product development. I named my new website 10 years ago The Manufacturing Connection because I saw that the future was not simply automation but connections of many types. Here is an example.
Andre Wegner, CEO Authentise, outlines that “despite the noise about the need to be more agile, it’s clear there’s a relative lack of software solutions available today to support R&D, industrial engineering and manufacturing to actually accomplish this. If the definition and simulation of product and process is digital, then there’s no reason we cannot adopt similar processes to those pioneered in software and move at digital development speeds.”
Authentise Threads sits alongside existing engineering and project management systems to provide key features such as:
- Cross Functional Work Thread Collaboration. Create, search, follow & link shared work threads across engineering teams and partners with real time structured communication, chat & notifications.
- Shared information, knowledge, experience, resources and context. A shared repository of all the key data, resources, goals, metrics needed for work thread execution
- Collaborative Digital Decision Making. Formally track and manage workthread efforts, insights, actions, decisions, resolutions, and more.
- Continuous learning & improvement. Share full history & traceability of work, discussions, issues, decisions, actions, metrics, all with full context.
Authentise Threads delivers value immediately. The R&D organisation of a leading surgical robotics company was up to speed in less than 30 minutes. Within 2 weeks they were seeing a 1.5x ROI on their investment, tracking 100% of their R&D decisions digitally, while saving 150 hours and 20 meetings across a distributed team including external partners. They doubled the effective size of their team.
Since starting at Singularity University in 2012, Authentise has focused on providing flexible, data-driven workflows in the most agile manufacturing and engineering settings. Its tools help manage the order to part process by connecting to machines and providing operators with digital tools to enable traceability, repeatability and efficiency on the shop floor. Initially focused on the additive manufacturing sector, it now has clients such as Boeing, 3M, and Danfoss, who have seen savings of up to 95% with 6x ROI in the first year.
by Gary Mintchell | May 10, 2023 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Productivity, Software
Some writers expound upon autonomous—machines and processes that run themselves, machines and processes that are self-diagnosing and self-healing, elimination of humans from manufacturing.
I disagree (or my favorite phrase from my high school years, “I beg to differ.”). We should be enhancing the human-to-process or human-to-machine collaboration. In so doing, we should be enhancing the role of the human. Promoting collaboration, creativity, ideas, innovation that only comes from thinking humans.
At least by 1995 I was configuring ways to propose to my customers ways to replace paper-based production and maintenance systems with digital equivalents. So, when a PR person sent a product release with the title “Why Ditch Paper Processes?”, I was transported Forward to the Past, so to speak.
The company is Beekeeper, a Swiss-based company founded in 2012 to enhance the experiences of the front-line worker. They have released a new maintenance workflow product. Here are some points:
- Paper processes slow workflows down and increase disruptions.
- Sharing information with the team is difficult when it’s kept on a sheet of paper.
- Facilities teams need continuity of workflows from one shift to the next which is difficult when information is siloed and fragmented on multiple pieces of paper.
- Poor maintenance management can lead to more downtime, higher repair costs, and loss of productivity.
- Companies that rely on paper documentation and manual maintenance and inspection workflows grapple with data accuracy, problems with efficiency, and information accessibility. This impacts consistency and safety, can lead to more errors, and eventually impact a company’s productivity and revenue.
Beekeeper’s Maintenance and Inspections is a mobile-first solution for paperless workflows for frontline teams.
By switching paper workflows to digital ones with the Maintenance and Inspections package, frontline workers can:
- Decrease downtime and disruptions
- Stay compliant with easy tracking and automatic documentation
- Ensure maintenance tasks are completed correctly and consistently to reduce the frequency of accidents, repairs, and unplanned breakdowns
- Shorten the time between detecting and fixing potential hazards and the amount of time it takes to fix the hazard/time to resolution
- Optimize your maintenance management process to reduce overall maintenance costs and enhance workplace safety
- Use real-time checklist tracking so everyone knows jobs completed and issues addressed to avoid redundancy
- Upload images to Beekeeper of maintenance issues or repairs for documentation
- Enable managers to easily assign and track tasks
- Have immediate access to all resources they need to complete tasks
- Report safety hazards right away
- Save time and reduce miscommunication with smart management software. Automatically translate all content into your employees’ preferred language.
- Get up-to-the-minute data on who is reading your posts, message delivery confirmation, and employee engagement statistics to improve manufacturing processes.
