Every day we hear it. “We must be more productive.” “The UK is falling behind on productivity.” The thing is, productivity is not the problem, and never has been. The same applies to efficiency. You see, productivity without effectiveness is nothing.
I’ve written about this before and will do again, but don’t trust me. In his book “Buy Back Your Time” Dan Martell says “Even efficiently staying busy isn’t the answer. Most entrepreneurs are extremely efficient (and I would add productive here). They can eliminate task after task faster than anyone else. They can make the calls, send the emails, seal the deals – overall, they can make it happen. But effective busyness simply creates a faster streamline to Stuart’s situation.” Stuart is the executive who is suffering panic attacks as a result of burn out. This is a fabulous book. When you have read this blog, I suggest you buy it and read it straight away.
All the things Dan says about efficiency above can be applied to productivity. Efficiently and productively producing the wrong product or service just gets you more of the wrong thing quicker. If you want to be effective then work backwards. Determine the objective and then work out the systems you need to put in place to get there. Remember being unproductive and inefficient but moving toward your goal is far better than efficiently and productively moving away from it. Our obsession with the crude measures of productivity that we currently use are just output related and so often result in the former rather than the latter. Productive busy fools are still fools!!!.
The advent of AI puts much of this into focus. Used correctly AI is very good at making you more productive and efficient but it can’t set your ultimate objective for you. It can help you get there in a better (more effective ) way but without that objective it just makes you better at doing things that don’t need to be done. I love most AI but it won’t replace me as it is really good at means and I’m really good at ends. Together we make an effective team.
Over the years I have helped many individuals (including myself) and businesses do less but better. If you would like help in this area then please Contact me.
In everything you do remember productivity without effectiveness is nothing.