Category Archives: Personal Development

I recently went to my favourite Katong Laksa in Holland Village and they have just undertaken a new productivity initiative. Now, instead of ordering your lunch with a human being by a till, you go to one of 4 iPads at the front, strain your eyes to find what you want, extras, less of this and how many portions (keep long nails for the minuscule buttons!) All the while being assisted to find what you want by a kindly, helpful human being (the same one who used to take the order for you).

The productivity increase? Honestly, I think it was slower, saved no labour and made me feel a little less cared for… We strive for increased productivity but there are some things that should be kept – the work that adds value and differentiates your business from another… Meantime, personal productivity drives might distract us from doing the work that really matters:

More hours in the day. It’s one thing everyone wants, and yet it’s impossible to attain. But what if you could free up significant time—maybe as much as 20% of your workday—to focus on the responsibilities that really matter?

To identify the tasks you need to drop or outsource, take this interactive assessment. It’s one thing everyone wants, and yet it’s impossible to attain. We’ve spent the past three years studying how knowledge workers can become more productive and found that the answer is simple: Eliminate or delegate unimportant tasks and replace them with value-added ones.

We believe there’s a way forward, however. Knowledge workers can make themselves more productive by thinking consciously about how they spend their time; deciding which tasks matter most to them and their organizations; and dropping or creatively outsourcing the rest. We tried this intervention with 15 executives at different companies, and they were able to dramatically reduce their involvement in low-value tasks: They cut desk work by an average of six hours a week and meeting time by an average of two hours a week. And the benefits were clear. For example, when Lotta Laitinen, a manager at If, a Scandinavian insurance company, jettisoned meetings and administrative tasks in order to spend more time supporting her team, it led to a 5% increase in sales by her unit over a three-week period.

Organizations share some of the blame for less-than-optimal productivity. Cost-cutting has been prevalent over the past decade, and knowledge workers, like most employees, have had to take on some low-value tasks—such as making travel arrangements—that distract them from more important work. Even though business confidence is rebounding, many companies are hesitant to add back resources, particularly administrative ones. What’s more, increasingly complicated regulatory environments and tighter control systems in many industries have contributed to risk-averse corporate cultures that discourage senior people from ceding work to less seasoned colleagues. The consequences are predictable: “My team is understaffed and underskilled, so my calendar is a nightmare and I get pulled into many more meetings than I should,” one study subject reported. Another commented, “I face the constraint of the working capacity of the people I delegate to.”

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