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"It is impossible for ideas to
compete in the marketplace if no forum for The Business Forum Journal
How to Improve
Productivity By David J. Gardner
Some things never seem to change. About thirty years ago, James Treybig, the president of Tandem Computers, called a meeting with the engineering leadership team. He opined that when there were about 20 people in engineering, the team regularly performed miracles. 3 years later, he observed that with 300 people in engineering, it seemed like nothing was getting done. He was puzzled by this and wanted to know why. How many executives are feeling the same frustration today? Too many executives know that business execution, collaboration and productivity are not what they could or should be. While there are certainly fewer people employed in most companies today, the employees that remain are not accomplishing more. There is plenty of gridlock, angst, frustration and unhappiness to go around. Executives crave:
What executives crave really has not changed much. Jimmy had posed a great question with no simple answer. The problem had multiple dimensions:
For the vast majority of companies and departments, the challenges we discussed in that meeting 30 years ago prevail today. What needs to be done? Understand -- from your employee’s perspective -- critical areas that likely are undermining your productivity: Meetings
Decision-making
Business execution within critical business processes--priority must be given to customer-facing processes
I personally use a 2 x 2 matrix contrasting strategy with execution to understand vulnerabilities and opportunities for improvement.
Topic:
_________________________ You can
select a topic such as your own company, a competitor, a critical company
function such as product development, customer service, operations, etc.,
meetings, decision-making, etc., and rate strategy (how effective is our
strategy) versus execution (how well are we executing). It is
worthwhile examining the same topic from multiple perspectives, e.g.,
internal customers, external customers, the marketplace, etc., to
develop a more comprehensive understanding. As Marshall Goldsmith offers, "what got you here,
won't get you there." If the areas identified above were easy to
improve, companies would not continue to be plagued by them all these years.
Most executives are too close to the problems to see what can be done about
them. Is not it time you took a closer look?
David
J.
Gardner, has held senior management positions in Product Development,
Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service, and
Product Management. He joined Tandem Computers in 1979 where
he was responsible for Corporate Documentation Standards for
Tandem's highly configurable and expandable computer
systems. In 1983, he designed and implemented a
Configuration Guide for Dialogic Systems instituting a
process that greatly simplified a complex, modular product
such that the field sales organization and international OEM
customers could easily define their order requirements. This
methodology satisfied the product definition needs of sales,
marketing, engineering, manufacturing, customer service and
finance. David founded his consulting practice in 1991. He
is a graduate of San Jose State University (BA) and Santa
Clara University (MBA). David is a member of the Society for
the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) and has been Board
Approved in the Area of Configurable Product & Services
Strategy and Implementation. In 2010, he was inducted in the
Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame. Out of
over 1,000 consultants who have completed Alan Weiss’s
mentoring program, only 26 have been inducted in the Hall of
Fame. Return to
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