The presence of domestic competitors, startups, and low-cost providers is an ever-present threat. Every industry or field of work faces these threats. It’s well known that we are hammering the slogan “improve productivity” into our heads. We’ve all heard it many times as an overused mantra. Each company, I’m sure, has a primary goal—to boost productivity—and assigns a percentage to it every year.

 

Let me pause for a second and see what thoughts pop into my head when I say the term performance.

Insisting that the team figure out how to do more with less:

• Benchmarking, discovering fresh “best practices” for execution
• Comprehensive Management of Change documents
• Ideas jars and brainstorming sessions to enhance
• Modernization of large capital assets to automate
• Leadership development workshop
• Investigate the company procedure for “waste”
• Working overtime in the hopes of eking out an extra one or two percent

 

All the team members and intermediate managers hear this word in their town hall once a year. Above are a few things I have heard. There is a common misconception among upper-level managers. They view higher productivity as equal to higher profits. The sad reality is that teams all around the world work so difficult to reach that 3% target. Yet in the following year, they have to work even harder to reach the next 3% goal.

 

I would like to summarise a case study that I read not long ago and share with you its key points. The crew of a massive US mineral extraction complex believed they had reached their lowest point. In their pursuit of ever-increasing output, they believed so. Investors expected more from the company. Despite having the best-in-class output (cost per tonne of ore moved), the company found itself stuck. To enhance their search for improvement opportunities, they conducted a scouting effort. Then they enlisted the aid of a prominent management consulting firm. Based on the benchmarking analysis, they identified a few points of interest. A total of 15% presented opportunities for price enhancements. Of the total opportunities, 10% were considered “achievable” in the near future. Among the possibilities were a plethora of difficult and costly adjustment requests. The firm would have to make various changes to achieve the findings.

 

The knowledge that their efficiency was at its highest was reassuring. The team’s paranoia when recontacting the investors was a major turnoff. So, one of the engineering team’s leaders proposed a new perspective. He wanted to tackle their cost goals from a problem-solving perspective. The group found certain new issues with the company’s strategy and processes. Fixing these issues could reduce the company’s cost per tonne by 60%.

 

What was the deciding factor? They shifted their focus from the meaningless pursuit of “productivity”. They shifted to the actual identification and resolution of challenging problems. This completely altered their outlook. They achieved it through two stages:

1. The group mastered the art of research. By delving deep inside the company process to unearth million-dollar issues.
2. Influenced a shift in team performance. By teaching them to tackle complex issues with a fresh perspective.

 

This is my argument. We can temporarily set aside productivity. Only focus on solving problems, which will lead to greater results than you can imagine.

 

Furthermore, the company can achieve this. Who needs to know how?

 

Adapt to Seek Out More Recent Issues Usually, when company executives consider “problems,” they’re actually imagining this. They picture a myriad of minor issues that crop up daily. The value of any one of them is unknown, and the prospect of solving them all seems insurmountable.

 

They will train a significant portion of their workforce in fundamental improvement methods. Expect that the training will address all the minor issues. This, when aggregated, will constitute a major accomplishment. The ROI is questionable in the majority of cases.

 

The Pareto principle does catch up with company leaders at some point. They apply the 80/20 rule in their job at will. Many issues lie dormant inside the business process. It’s because of limitations or presumptions made in the past. Since nobody wants to mess with a successful process or company, they never dare to oppose them. Thus, one must shift their perspective to see worthwhile, solvable problems. How? This is achieved by lifting the mask of preconceived notions and limitations.

 

Once problem solvers make it a practice to get to the bottom of things, they’ll start to notice. Notice how hidden, disregarded, or accepted problems are there in every process encountered. They’ll figure out how to spot them and then deal with them.

 

Locating the source of an issue and fixing it is not an effortless skill to get. If so, what are the steps to learn or hone this ability?

 

It’s not uncommon for cost-conscious companies to have experience fixing problems. Many of them are well-versed in well-liked problem-solving procedures. They also provide frameworks for tackling problems. The goal of many of these approaches is to make it easier for a large population to resolve low-level issues. Because there are few possible reasons for simple problems, the resolution process appears to be quick. This organisational approach speeds up the process.

 

We need a fresh strategy for the tougher problems, the ones that hide tremendous value. Complex company processes are a common place for problems to arise. There could be hundreds, if not thousands, of underlying reasons. A problem-solver’s intellect must remain intact; a rote procedure can never do this. They’ll have to rethink their thinking processes.

 

Give them new patterns to consider the subject from several perspectives. Rather than giving them a straightforward organised checklist way. There will be a sea change when individuals stop wasting time. Rather than brainstorming , they can start a new, more intelligent method to get to the root cause.

 

Everyone will be able to see the new behaviour:

• Stop Guessing: time to put that habit to bed
• Understand the problem: investigate the nature of the problem in a rigorous manner
• Accept your ignorance: know that you don’t know, and ask the “stupid” questions
• Know what problem you’re solving: make sure you’re working on the observable problem itself. Rather than trying to solve an assumption about what’s causing it
• Scavenge into the fundamentals: learn how the process works. The science behind how it controls the problem
• Never rely on experts: don’t ask them to solve the problem for you; get their help understanding the process
• Believe that a simple solution exists: Have the confidence. That when you find the root cause, a simple and elegant solution will be in your grasp
• Only fact-based decisions: don’t let anyone’s opinions or assumptions lead the team Stay on target: cut distractions and cleave off as many avenues of inquiry as possible

    By adopting this new attitude, the team will experience a surge of enthusiasm. Change your focus from “Productivity” to “Problem solving”. It will make your job more enjoyable and productive. It also makes it easy for you to achieve your objectives and sometimes even surpass them.

What do you think? I’m game.

 

“Ready to Ditch the Productivity Trap?

🚀 Shift your focus from ‘doing more’ to ‘solving better’.

💡 Start today:

1. Please identify one significant problem,rather than a task; it truly matters.

2. Ask, ‘Why?’ three timesbefore jumping to solutions.

3. Share your biggest ‘aha!’ moment in the comments—let’s learn together!