There’s constant talk in the UK about productivity… and how we’re not very productive.

Strangely, that’s not borne out when you look at GDP per capita. Figures from the IMF put the United States high (almost $90k), Germany a tad ahead of us ($60k), UK and Hong Kong level pegging ($57k), ahead of Canada ($55k) and France ($49k).

So it must be not our GDP per capita, but the rate at which we achieve it – i.e. the UK’s GDP per capita per hour.

Do we care? That we achieve more than other nations but spend more time each day to achieve it?

I think the economists would say that we lack headroom to achieve more than currently. But then who’s to say that if more GDP gain were to present itself, that we wouldn’t step up to the efficiency plate?

All of which demonstrates that whilst it’s important to try and measure economic matters such as productivity, it’s all too easy to just suck up those metrics without question. And that when you scratch the surface, some of them turn out to not make a great deal of sense.

So, let’s turn to staff productivity within a company.

And I’m going to now say something controversial here (surprise, surprise).

Remember that great saying from Henry Ford? “I know that half my advertising works… I just don’t know which half!”

Well, I believe that’s the dilemma for CEOs and senior directors on their overall human resources… their staff. They know that half of them are vital to the organisation’s health & growth… they just ‘don’t know which half’.

So, what does the CEO do?

Yes – you guessed it – RESTRUCTURE.

Out with the dead wood. Rise like a phoenix. Easy, yes?

NO.

There are a few companies around us at the moment who are restructuring. And I fear they are often retaining the clever (but unproductive) internal politicians, and they are losing their less politically smart (but productive and vital) people.

Again, every situation will be a mixed bag and is never clear-cut.

Nevertheless, how do the CEO and the Board avoid losing the good people?

The only answer must be to bring in a third party that has good industry knowledge, but no vested interest in the company’s internal retain/dismiss decisions.

Give that party a firm brief – to relentlessly seek out the people who are productive and score them highly (only them).

Let loose those consulting dogs and they will bring a true picture back. If you give them a tough but ruthlessly fair brief:

• Productive does NOT mean having lots of meetings that produce nothing.
• Productive does NOT mean high level ‘strategizing’ with no practical applications.
• Productive does NOT mean airy-fairy, vague, unrealistic pronouncements that leave others to pick up the pieces of how to make it work in practice.
• Productive does NOT mean avoiding responsibility and accountability.
• Productive does NOT mean excuses.

I was once called in by an organisation where the CEO was leaving and had advised the incoming CEO to ‘get rid of’ the marketing team, pronouncing them hopeless and unproductive.

I asked for a month to assess them.

After a month I went back to the new CEO.

It turned out that this marketing team had been completely demotivated. The old boss had been flinging out silly and impractical instructions. They had been starved of budget. The boss changed direction every couple of weeks. They had been constantly criticised in front of (cowardly and unsupportive) colleagues.

I recommended they be retained, that I act as their directorial interface for a year, that they be given resources, but also demanding stretch targets.

Once their efforts were joined up with sales and operations, commercial results doubled in 24 months.

Now, that was – admittedly – quite a beautiful narrative, and one that can by no means be often replicated. But a substantial positive effect from focusing on the people who actually get stuff done (rather than just talk about it all the time) IS REPLICABLE. Pretty much every time, I would say.

CEOs who get their own internal managers to choose who stays and who goes are simply increasing the rot. They are allowing vested interests to make decisions that serve personal, not corporate, interests.

They are allowing poor performers to mark their own homework.

I mean it’s so obvious, it’s laughable, isn’t it?

Yet it happens all the time.

Don’t let it be you.