# Examining Productivity By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2023-12-09 What does it mean to be productive? In some respects, this is easy to answer. Productivity is the degree to which one produces or makes something of value. In industrial settings, productivity is relatively straightforward. Creating more than one did yesterday or more than one’s coworkers is desired if one is creating widgets. Of course, it is essential to add the caveat of the required quality to the units produced. But once one has noted that the number of widgets of the necessary quality has been produced, one can assess relative productivity all day. Assessing productivity for intellectual work is more challenging. Comparing the quality of one’s thoughts is not so easy. Comparing across departments is a challenge, too. It is difficult to say how many productive ideas an analyst should have daily compared to a person working in marketing. This isn’t to say that productivity isn’t essential in the fields. Rather, it is pointing out that assessing productivity is challenging. Determining what to measure is the first step. Thoughts are currently unamenable to measurement as the unit productivity. Perhaps reports are a better measure of productivity in thinking professions. Like widgets, such a measure has both quantitative and qualitative aspects. If a report is a report is a report, one might wonder if there is any value in the reports. It isn’t easy to assess the organizational consequence of a report at the moment of production. One can assess its length. One can assess its prose. One can assess its detail. However, one is unable to assess its consequences. Will a given report have an organizational effect? Does the organizational impact of the report itself influence the degree of its organizational effect? Thinking organizations likely make more effective use of reports than standard organizations. This means that at any level of assessed quality, a thinking organization will be more effective at using the content of a given report. Examining productivity is more than counting things. Examining productivity requires an appreciation for context. If an organization is unhappy with its productivity, it should perhaps have an assessment of how it consumes whatever is currently being produced. If what is produced is routinely ignored, workers will produce less and of lower quality. Use and productivity are more symbiotic than management wants to admit. #### Related Items [[Productivity]] [[Work]] [[Assessments]] [[Analytics]] [[Reporting]] [[Value]] [[Organization]]