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Productivity = Effectiveness + Efficiency: Measuring Effectiveness with SWOOP
Today the technical and business press is filled with stories about the productivity gains available through a digitally disrupted workplace. ‘Bots’ have replaced ‘Apps’ as the ‘must have’ technology gadget. We like Bots because they promise to take away the drudgery of dealing with mindless bureaucratic work processes, freeing our time for tasks that can employ our full intellectual selves. But we always have to remember that productivity has two parts; Effectiveness and Efficiency, or as I like to frame them: ‘Doing the Right Thing’ and ‘Doing it Right’. And of course being extremely efficient doing the ‘wrong’ thing is just a waste!
Now that You @Mention It…
Being ‘mentioned’ publicly has long been considered a most worthy form of praise. In war times being “Mentioned in Despatches” was a common form of recognising exceptional performance or behaviour and the term has since migrated into mainstream business. With the advent of Social Media/Networking and the @ mention popularised by Twitter, we have seen the ‘mention’ evolve to more than an instrument of praise, but also one for tagging people into an online conversation. While perhaps not as gratifying, it does send a signal from the ‘tagger’ that I am thinking of you, and vice versa.
Formulas for Success
There is something about ‘Formulas for Success’ that can be both appealing and irritating. The appealing part is of course the simplicity of it. If I could boil down the complexity of my life into a set of simple algorithms, then life would all of a sudden become much simpler. The irritating part is that we generally don’t believe that the world can be described simply as a set of formulas. What formulas do well, however is to cut to the chase. They remove the clutter and identify what core elements you need to concern yourself with. That is why I was attracted to this little excerpt from Adam Grant’s recent newsletter:
5 Ways to Blast through the Productivity “Sound Barrier”: Trading Pipes for Platforms
The recent OECD report on the future of productivity identifies the growing gap between those super-productive organisations and the rest. They highlight ICT playing a key role in the future of productivity. The now ubiquitous “digital disruption” phrase, in the USA in particular, is providing real-life examples of the productivity boom enjoyed by successful digital platform businesses.
