Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola

Productivity Case Histories | Productivity improvement articles | Time Tips Articles
 

Productivity Knowledge Base: Productivity Metrics

How do you measure productivity? If you are the U.S. Government, you measure output per worker. As in many other things, the U.S. Government's methods and common sense do not converge. Their method is flawed, because it does not factor in the hours worked.

Productivity is output per labor hour. It is not output per worker.

Be careful to use the right metrics, or you'll really  have no clue if your productivity enhancement measures are working or not. Now you know the right way to define productivity, but what does this mean in real terms? How do you know if Person A on a crew is being productive at Task X? From a manager's point of view, aggregate productivity is meaningless.

Suppose you have a crew of six people. One of them is a poor worker, one is a star, and the rest are about average. Looking at their total output, it would appear there is no problem--they are working as productively as can be expected.

Note: "Average" is not diminutive. Most people like to think of themselves as "above average," but in reality the average person is, well, average. And that's not necessarily a bad thing to be.

If you were to watch how this team works, you'd see that if one member came up to expectations, the whole team would have a higher output.

Suppose this team does very well at running conduit. You watch them and then walk off, confident they are very productive. They are running 20% more conduit per hour than any other crew in your company. But the next day, you notice they pull wire at 50% below where your job guide says they should be.

This kind of up and down continues throughout the project. At the end of the project, you measure productivity and find out that the crew exceeds productivity expectations by just a little. Is this a highly productive crew?

This scenario illustrates what's wrong with measuring productivity at the end of a project. That measurement tells you next to nothing. It doesn't show you strengths or weaknesses. What you need to know is where your team has room for improvement. If they are weak in wire-pulling, perhaps they  need better tools or some training. The only way you are going to know is to measure their wire-pulling productivity.

Don't oversimplify productivity metrics the way the U.S. Government does. Instead, focus in on skill areas and identify those that need improvement through such things as:

  • Better tools, parts, materials, or equipment
  • Better procedures
  • Communication improvement
  • Better work environment
  • Specific training

If you use your productivity metrics as troubleshooting aids, you will be making good use of those metrics. Otherwise, you will be using them to generate numbers that mean as much as "the check is in the mail."

 

 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do. And, paradoxically, many common "time management" techniques and practices are timewasters because they divert limited resources (such as time) to the wrong things.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.