Is There a Cost to Increased Productivity?

I posed this question to people in my network just the other day. The answers coming in are fascinating to say the least. What is your gut response / reaction to that question?

Those working in areas of human systems, psychology and coaching answered from the perspective of whole of person i.e. work life balance, creativity and innovation, personal values, learning curve with one of my favourites coming from my colleague Lee being "Sometimes you just have to get off the train to be able to see the countryside."

Those in the business world talk about systems, increased productivity, legal requirements etc. Well you get the picture. It's been proven again and again in staff surveys and research that it's people and they're happiness quotient in the workplace that makes all the difference in their effectiveness. Yet, when it comes to measuring productivity, many organizations don't pay any attention to staff satisfaction and the happiness quotient when they measure and implement changes regarding productivity.

One colleague asked "You had something else in mind when you asked this, didn't you? Will you share it?" Ahh some people know me all too well!

My goal was to ask the question. Surprise surprise coming from a coach (she said tongue in cheek).

I wanted to ask the question. I wanted to see where people were with regards to how they even processed the question. I'm watching organizations work at becoming 'more productive' from an organizational perspective and in the midst they're killing their people. Better, faster, smarter, deeper, more intuitive, less intuitive (follow orders), so more with less, until they go on auto pilot....lose a great deal of their innovative spirit and creativity but meet all the criteria of effectiveness measurements. What we lose in the translation is impact on people, growing people from an emotionally intelligent perspective and not just how much they can churn out along the way.

In asking the question I got a lot of people to think about it...where they are, want to be, need to be and need to change to be there. Nothing more. Nothing less. So What Can We Change?

Be aware...mindful. Pay attention when you start doing things on autopilot and stop asking the important questions. That's exactly when you have to start questioning.