Can you be super Productive?
Mentor Speak
This series of short write ups provide pearls of wisdom from Global Leaders and Mentors who are associated with us. They bring in a practitioner’s perspective and serves as an effective combination of advice that has authenticity, experience and most importantly – relevance.
I have realized that almost everyone in a company aspires to become supremely productive. If they aren’t, the reason is primarily related to self and not much to do with the environment. It’s the environment one creates with thoughts, attitudes and a self-drive that makes an individual a great asset to a corporation.
One needs to remember these 3 things in order to ensure that they continue to remain relevant and productive at all times.
Performance Orientation
This is a typical playbook almost all organizations use, to drive performance. This is translated in the form of targets, goals, measurements and periodic monitoring of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The sad part is that most people do not understand the meaning of these parameters. The worst is, when many do not even believe in some of those goals and measures. The result is simple - lack of productivity. Such employees show up in their offices or factories for the sake of attendance and pay. Their job becomes a drag into the workplace. Have you ever woken up feeling “Oh God! One more day of punishment in life”. My personal research shows that a large part of the population in the workforce suffer from this syndrome, I call ‘performance trauma’.
How can you get rid of this syndrome? Here are 4 suggestions:
Keep an eye on your targets, goals and the measurements of KPIs. This should be like a calendar or watch in front of you every day. Remember that you contribute each day towards those goals, targets and measures. You cannot be a Salesperson and close deals in the last 2 weeks of your quarter or an operations leader where you are only reviewing your teams once in a blue moon.
If you believe that you have a target that is unachievable, look around and you will be surprised that some of your colleagues are not only meeting them, they are indeed far exceeding their targets. Learn from them. Trust me, they are not lucky. There is something they are doing that you aren’t and most of it is hard and passionate work.
If you work for a company and if you have taken a target upon yourself, do not shy away. Companies are built on people who die for their performances. If 2 out of 10 soldiers believe in their performance in the army, that country would lose all wars.
Never justify your failure. When you have an unsettling itch for your work, you’ll find things happening at speeds and accuracy you’ve never imagined. For argument sake, even if your performance went down, you’ll still feel great. That’s because it wasn’t down for lack of productivity.
Profit Orientation
Money is a great motivator for almost everyone in the corporate world. This lever is widely used to enhance productivity. While I will not debate on the good or bad part of this approach in this article, I will bring some key insights into the minds of the people with profit orientation. Every activity they perform has a direct correlation with money. For such people, a significant part of their effort and existence is centered around economic upside. Let’s take an example. “I am a middle manager and I believe that if I meet my goal, I will not only get my variable pay, I will be entitled to additional bonus. That money is the most important thing to me. In addition to this I will potentially qualify for a promotion and therefore generate money.” Profit becomes their central force. This is a very potent force and many people climb the ladder in their life using profit as a fulcrum.
Here are my suggestions to people who use this incredible force for becoming amazingly productive:
Remember that economics goes hand in hand with emotions. It is indeed important to balance between ‘need’ and ‘greed’. ‘Profit extremism’ can destroy long term sustainability of a company, a family or relationships.
Profit orientation should never come at the cost of harming the society or destroying an inspiring culture of a workplace. Not all progress is made with money. The pitfalls can be severe and devastating. End of the day you should never be remembered as a brutal, greedy and inconsiderate person.
Profit with patience is a great counterbalance to the negativities that are generally found in people with such orientation. They are indeed blessed with perseverance and virtues of abstinence. These people make a lot of money and yet they need the least. Many of them give their money away to greater causes like charities. They are examples of outstanding people whose productivity ranks among the top in the industry. They have some hidden jewels and that’s the next point I’ll discuss.
Purpose Orientation
This sounds very philosophical and profound. Yet it is very simple. These people do their work because of their inner ‘calling’. Starting from sports, entertainment, corporates, these people wake up every morning with their calling and they land up in their workplace with passion and pride. For them, money, hours of work, organizational constraints are irrelevant. They just love doing things and they only work for companies that allow them to manifest their calling. I have found great engineers who switched careers for their calling, say in music or cinema and have become phenomenally successful. When you ask their previous supervisors about their performances, you will hear horror stories. Why so? The reason is they had a different calling and their job wasn’t aligned to that calling.
Now that may seem a bit difficult to get to do something that aligns with one’s calling. How can one find a calling in something you would otherwise not like to do? Is this possible? Yes indeed! These people figure out a way to do their work at least 2 to 3 times the efficiency of their peers and free themselves up so that they can pursue activities related to their calling – be it painting, biking, hiking or just simply snoring with a book in their hand. I know an inspiring Leader, Chairman and CEO of a big Bank and he never overworked beyond 5.30pm. He was the most productive CEOs Indian banks have ever seen. He too had a calling of juggling all balls thrown at him by life. For him, work, mission for the bank, family and hobbies were callings that demanded equal importance. For some, where their purpose in life and profession are merged, some magical things happen to their work. Time disappears for them and they can’t be stopped by anyone. They transcend productivity and become like a prophet. Like him, they are preaching all hours while they are awake. They transition from being an employee to an evangelist. They become examples.
In summary, there are many paths to superior productivity at the workplace. Find the slot that is close to your heart. As you make those changes in your attitude, your work life will be a celebration. You will never look back on productivity anymore. Suddenly you’ll find that you have become a pillar of strength at workplace and home. You then believe, behave and become!
