As a productivity specialist, your main role would not be just a system developer, but an agent of change who change the behaviour of the people within organization. To improve productivity of an organization, you must improve productivity of the people running the systems. And to make them more productive, you must change their behaviour. To change the behaviour, you must change their mindset first, that is why you will find dificulties because changing a mindset is like changing e person’s life. And i’ve seen many of productivity specialists fail due to this reason.
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It’s not the title of the Beatles’ song, that is what we, the certified productivity specialist, do in every organization we are in. As you know, the productivity is the ratio between output and input. Therefore it is simply said, to improve the productivity, we need to improve the output and reduce the input, but how?
Many of you have heard this quote, but I believe not many of us understand it, and know how to deal with it. If we understand this, it would be more easy for us to accept the change. What have been worked well in the past, might not work today. What has become a leader years ago, now is just a follower. It’s all about the change. I see it happens in my company, every year, there must be a new requirements applied by our buyer. if we can not fulfil it, we will lose the business, but to apply it, we will face a problems from worker, the supplier, and all stakeholder of the organization. How can we handle this?
Last week, just after posting the article about the secret of successful person that focus in every task he/she done and avoid multitasking, many response coming to challenge that argument. One of them said that many housewives do multitasking every weekdays morning successfully, such as feeding a baby while preparing the breakfast for the family, and at the same time help and assist another kids to brush his/her teeth. Another argument said that it might work for business and industrial issues but not in your daily life. Are you agree with that?
It was a sad story actually, but I think this will be good to learn from it. After the Airasia QZ8501 crash of last month that killing all 162 people on board, Indonesia’s transport ministry had suspended 61 domestic flight routes due to violance in flight permit based on the audit report that had been conducted after the accident. Pro’s and contra’s were following the decision where the contra’s mostly thought it’s not quite related to the accident. Are you agree with that?
Happy new year 2015, may you all blessed in prosperity and healthy. I believe, that is what we all want to have in life. To be prosper and health, you must ensure the ratio between your income and your cost is positive, and better than its previous condition time to time. This is productivity we are talking about.
If you want your organization become more productive, then, as a leader, you must make yourself more productive than other people in your organization. Below are the 6 things every leader should do and not do to become a productive leader.
As a boss of a company, organization, or even a small team, you might get annoyed when you must complete the work that your subordinate should did it for you. Or perhaps your supervisor get upset on you due to uncomplete job you should do for him/her. Yes, it happens every where every time in every organization. It’s not a fatal mistake actually but it could make you feel bad all day. And if this is usual happens in your organization, I bet your organization is very poor performed.
I remember have got the story about fresh fish. Despite the thrutness of the story, I like the idea behind it. This is the story about how to keep the fish fresh to eat. As you know, the japannese people has a strong culture in consuming fish. They can taste which fish coming from refrigerator or even pool with fish coming from the sea. Just storing fish in the water tank within the ship during fishery will not keep the fish fresh. Why? Because fish will swim slower inside the tank than in the see. What the fishery did was quite simple, they put a little shark inside the tank. Of course there will be some fish eaten by shark, but the other will swim as fast as they can to keep their alive and fresh as well.
I am quite sure that you think this is a funny question, but not for me, it still a question that need to be answer correctly. How to eat an elephant? One bite a time. This is a logical question need to be answered logically. What does it mean? It means when we can not get a thing done, then break it down at the size possible for you to achieve it. Most of the program fail or success due to this reason.
Indicator to determine productivity ratio you want to monitor will play important role of your success. This is the most difficult step of improvement program we want to applied in our organization. For instance, we might take unit per labor as our productivity ratio. It would be okay when the operation hour keep stabil, meaning no over time and high turn over. When the turn over of your organization quite high, or over time fluctuate during your operation, then the indicator will mislead you. The best indicator would be unit per manhour paid that cover the over time and fluctuated turn over.
Are you agree with that? Is it realistic?
I will say I agree, and it is realistic, and this is the basic principle for productivity specialist like me. You have to do improvement continuosly, all the time, it never ended, and most important, not necessary cost so much money. When money take place, then for us, it is not an improvement, investment perhaps. So because improvement play important role for organization to win competition in the market, you need to understand the concept very well. I am very happy to share what I did during 15 years in operation management. Most of the problems happen on the floor that create low productivity is misunderstanding on the assignment or direction that subordinate got from their superior. It does not mean their superior did not explain what they need their subordinate to do. Somehow, minutes of meeting, or briefing, has conducted more than enough but the situation still happen, even in the organization where the system has been established very well.
It is not about how many certification your organization has got. It is more about the behaviour, the habit of the people in your organization. Why is that? And what should we do with that? Some of you might ask this question. How come the increament in labor productivity can not be seen in my financial report, meaning no profit or even get lost. Or, you might ask, how to ensure the increament in labor productivity will increase our profit.
Well, it’s not quite easy to explain but it is possible to find a simple approach to understand the situation as I will try to share here. For labor intensive industry, increament in minimum wages will impact the business sustainability of that industry. In Greater Jakarta area, the highest minimum wages in Indonesia, the increament of labor cost from 2012 to 2013 is 38%, and from 2013 to this year is 15%. To survive, some companies has relocated their factory to the area where minimum wages still acceptable, such as central Java where the minimum wages is only half of Greater Jakarta area.
As a productivity specialist, I will say it’s not necessary and indeed would create more risk in your investment. Generally speaking, productivity is the ratio of output and input. The output can be a product or service as the result of the process. And the input is the any resources required by the proses to produce the output.
To make the concept clear, let’s take an example. Let say you employ 1 worker to produce 1 kg of product per hour, then we can say the productivity is 1 kg per man hour. Now you change the machine that enable the same process, same worker produce 2 kg of product per hour, then the productivity become 2 kg per man hour. Or perhaps, you still use same machine but you give your worker proper training, and after some times, your worker able to produce 2 kg of product per hour using same machineries, then we can say, your productivity improve 2 kg of product per man hour. |
AuthorMaskal Novessro is a certified productivity specialist from APS. Eager to practice and share productivity improvement of both business and life. Categories
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