A valuable final product (VFP) is a concrete result of an employee’s or an entire department’s performance. It is always measurable and achievable, but not always tangible. But it is exactly what the company is willing to pay a salary for.
Thus, productivity is the efficiency with which an employee can achieve their VFP. That is a measure of how much valuable final product they can produce.
And while in production it is easy to increase the productivity of individual employees (by increasing the number of operations or automation systems, and occasionally by optimizing business processes), it can be extremely difficult to increase productivity for some positions that are based solely on intellectual work.
It is even more difficult to increase the productivity of managers. In addition to the intellectual work they do, managers also influence the work of their subordinates and the interaction with other structural units within the company.
Let’s have a look at 7 key problems below that reduce the productivity of managers in general and intellectual labour in particular.
1. Procrastination
You should not postpone important decisions and actions until later. Chinese wisdom, according to which the corpse of your enemy will sooner or later float past you if you sit on the river bank for a long time, rarely works in business. In fact, in order for something to happen, you need to take action all the time.
The saying ‘No water flows under a lying stone‘ works much more often — almost without fail.
The only way to fight procrastination is to reorganize your habits and set your priorities correctly.
2. Disorganisation
We are typically able to fulfil our direct duties effectively on our own, but we often have to interact with other employees as a matter of duty. And this is where chaos can start (and sometimes it doesn’t stop).
There is even such a management style — ‘seagull management’.
When you don’t know what inputs to expect from your superior, when your activities depend on the results of other employees (who are in no particular hurry), everything can collapse like a house of cards.
If you can’t influence your manager because of subordination, it is worth building a certain system of rules for proper communication with everyone else. You need to be able to organize not only your internal work, but also your external relations. It’s almost like big politics.
3. Micromanagement
Sometimes a management system with detailed micro-operations can be effective. But in most cases, micromanagement is a productivity killer.
What kind of efficient work can we talk about if, apart from the action itself, you have to think every time about whether you are doing something right, whether your action complies with the described norms and rules, whether nothing has changed since the last time you familiarized yourself with them, and so on.
All this is additional stress and a senseless waste of time. As a consequence, motivation and, of course, productivity fall.
Micromanagement can only be eradicated at the level of corporate culture and internal company standards.
4. Tasks and/or time to control points are too large
What allows us to look back and realise what has been done and what has not. Where we should push on and where we can relax? Only control and control points.
If you are an effective employee or an experienced manager, you know very well what self-control is. You can evaluate the results of your activity without external pushes and stimuli and, if necessary, correct the course.
But the higher the complexity of the project, the lower the motivation of the staff and/or the experience available, the harder it is to realise self-control.
Time always works against you. And the longer you move towards the same goal without setting intermediate goals, the weaker you feel its approach. All this badly affects your motivation and final productivity.
The way out is simple — break down tasks into smaller ones and set adequate deadlines for their realization.
5. Technical debt
Some management methodologies involve setting ambitious goals (with exceeding them) and achieving results as soon as possible (especially those that can be shown to the client or customer). All this can lead to the fact that some important technical aspects are realised without due attention. Their full realization is always delayed.
This is the technical duty, i.e., those features that will still need to be implemented. Sooner or later, the technical debt may become too big and start to affect the development and creation of the main ‘features’. There can easily come a point when all work stops and resources have to be redirected to tying up a few loose ends. Productivity during this period will be zero.
Technical duty is a sword of Damocles hanging over all the team members (both ordinary performers and the manager).
6. Unprepared workplace
A lot of problems can be resolved by working rituals. No, these are not shamanistic rituals with a tambourine. These are technical regulations that many people are familiar with.
Corporate culture and established norms, traditions, etc. can effectively complement the official regulatory part. For example, preparation and proper organisation of the workplace should become part of the work rituals of all employees.
Imagine, installing operating system updates can bring down an entire department or service. Why? Because, firstly, a system administrator has no regulations to install and test updates during the night shift, and secondly, employees do not have a tradition to come to their workplace 15–20 minutes earlier to check their workplace just before starting work, so that in case of problems they have time to manoeuvre — to take some actions to fix the situation.
7. Lack of a unified task base and communication environment
It would be more accurate to say that the main issue is the lack of operational control. The manager needs to know who is doing what, what results to expect and when, whether there are related tasks affecting the main one, when intermediate control points are assigned, how future tasks can be planned taking into account the current employment of subordinates, and more.
An experienced manager is given full carte blanche if they have quality tools at their disposal to improve their own efficiency. And a manager’s efficiency always affects the productivity of the unit or team entrusted to them.
The more qualitative and convenient the tool is, the more effective it is.
We offer to use Projecto service in projects. It is a fully cloud-based solution. It has everything you need for planning and control:
- Different ways of displaying tasks — the system flexibly adapts to any management methodology.
- End-to-end search by people, tasks, events, tags, notes and more.
- Convenient chat for discussing each individual entity — event, task, project, etc.
- Ready-to-use mobile apps.
- Flexible notification system for important events.
- Everything for working with documents (there are even templates with field substitution).
- History of changes.
- Employee cards.
- Audio and classic text notes.
- Distribution of tasks left after an employee’s dismissal
- And much more
Just see Projecto in action. It’s free and doesn’t require registration.
