Has your leadership complained that the organization cannot “go faster?”
I think “going faster” is the wrong objective. What we actually need is to produce more value over time than we currently do—in other words, improve productivity. Going faster does not necessarily make us more productive.
Consider driving through a construction zone. Traffic could move through the area much faster if everyone were coordinated and organized. Instead, each driver optimizes for themselves without considering the impact on everyone else. The result is that the entire system moves more slowly than it should.
Email is another example. Email allows us to communicate much faster than traditional methods. However, because sending messages is so easy and inexpensive, it also introduces much more noise into the communication channel. The reduced friction increases volume, which can ultimately slow communication overall.
Productivity is not simply speed, more options, or reduced friction. Productivity comes from improving the system that produces the work.
The industry-proven approach to increasing productivity generally follows this order:
- Improve the process.
- Improve the connections and handoffs between steps.
- Improve the work of individuals within the system.
- Repeat.
The order matters. Organizations often start by asking individuals to work faster or teams to become more efficient. However, optimizing individual performance inside a flawed process usually produces limited results.
The final point is that this cannot be accomplished by each team independently trying to improve its own area. Someone with visibility across the entire system must own and coordinate these efforts. Productivity improvements require systemic thinking because the biggest constraints often exist between teams rather than within them.