Organisations are always seeking to improve employee productivity.

There are countless approaches and training courses to help us prioritize what is urgent and important, to “manage the inbox”, and share other tricks that tantalize us with promises of peak productivity.

Given that people are still searching for the answer, it’s safe to say that these productivity hacks just don’t hack it.

The problem is that they fail to account for the simple fact that most people don’t work in isolation. They work in complex organizations defined by inter-dependencies between people.

These inter-dependencies between people are referred to as “systems” by academics (not to be confused with technologies), but they are in fact our business processes, our value chains through which customers are served and business value is created.

It is these “systems” or processes that have the greatest effect on personal productivity.

One of the “founding fathers” of continuous improvement and quality management, W. Edwards Deming asserted that 94% of most problems and possibilities for improvement belong to the system (process), not the individual.

It stands to reason that productivity improvements belong there as well.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article here . . , Daniel Markovitz addresses this topic and offers four specific strategies for collective performance.

To make a real impact on performance, you have to work at the systemic, “business process” level.

Business processes need designing, refining and continuous improvement to drive ever better customer experience, personal productivity, and business value.

It is good news and good timing that an end-to-end business process focus, including business process collaboration and “ownership” and business process management disciplines, is in vogue.

A fashionable trend can put some extra wind in your sails if well guided in its application!

Thanks for reading . . .