Creativity or productivity?

Whenever companies strive for higher productivity, they should look into value. Our traditional thinking focuses on opposites which is a kiss of death to all creativity, said Dr. Edward De Bono.

Last week's seminar (Media Trivium, 25th anniversary of commercial radio in Finland) was set at the Senate Square. As creative people crowded around in this beautiful atmosphere, a sudden thrill struck me. What is a civil servant doing here? What would I answer if some one, hunting for top productivity, should come to me in the afternoon, asking "Prove me what you achieved today".

The so called quarterly capitalism means no time for creativity. At its worst it means that a project of, say, 800 days can't afford one single day for developing its own work. Reasonable??

Dr. De Bono wore red socks, and I loved him the moment I saw him. He sat down, had a lovely set of pens to write and draw on old-fashioned slides. His words gave life to lines he drew, the words he wrote gave rhythm to the stories he told us. New horizons spread our consciousness.

Traditional western thinking squeezes us to look for only one solution, the ultimate right answer, the Truth. Every problem we seek solution for, tends to take us in opposite corners, just as enemies. Take heed, said Dr. De Bono!

In less than an hour this Nobel nominee (2005) pictured dozens of situations where abandoning the traditional thinking freed the solution seekers to see in new ways instead of the obvious. Certain mobile giant had spent millions of dollars in search of a solution where Dr De Bono and his lateral thinking elevated them in just one afternoon. But, the few thrills he threw us, showed that new thinking needs exercise.

All higher productivity seeking government offices would do well in practising their own thinking. We need desperately new tools for knowledge work. In addition we should be taught creative thinking. We need six thinking hats! Today's HBR article The Three Threats to Creativity focused on exactly the same topic.

Trend researcher Herman Konings reminded us about how short the time was for mobile phones to spread around the globe. Augmented reality is already here. What else awaits us just around the corner? - Makes me wonder, how taxes fit in in the future.

Mark Selby from Nokia led us, the new content designers, to our common topic. Radio connects audiences with advertisers; CRM in a studio has already revolutionized the means of engagement.

And, let us not forget the power of the radio! Sound without pictures means that we all illustrate a story of our own. Such a content is highly emotional and, thus, engaging.

Productivity in knowledge work?

Productivity in public sector is, in principle, justified. Everything financed with tax refunds must constantly be under critical viewing: can things be done more effectively, with less resources - perhaps even outsourced?

But. A big BUT. Time to stop to think!

The mechanistic models of measuring financial efficiency were based on scarcity in industrial production processes. The quicker you can get the product out of the line, the better. Do these laws apply in society, to people or knowledge workers?

Helsingin Sanomat (26 Aug 2010, page D1) featured an article about mental hospitals and their hard measures in treatment. However, an Imatra model came up: their statistics always looked better than elsewhere, their patients kept coming in but were also let out easier than elsewhere. Others were stunned: why do you what you do?

The answer is beautiful in its austerity.

Imatra looked at its health care system as a financial entity, like a zero-sum-game. If mental care closed their doors, ie. ceased treating patients with early symptoms, their life gets worse. Later those same patients are bound to need help, this time only more drastic and definitely more expensive measures.

The problem in sectoral management is, that all departments optimize their "sub-costs". Imatra, a blow away from bankruptcy at that time, resorted to the good old common sense. They reviewed total costs. When help is needed later in another section, child welfare, schools or social services, their costs exceed dramatically those of early stage intervention's. True leadership!

Researcher Ilkka Tuomi continues on same lines (HS 26 Sept 2010, page C14). Productivity laws that apply in mass production, can severely twist decision making in information society. Value is born in social networks from innovation and production of new meanings.

How do we speed up these processes? Think faster? I don't think so.

Leadership faces enormous challenges when organization's entities entail both physical products (tax returns), process developing (services, education, communications) and ICT (customer applications and office tools). Money is the scarce resource that they all are competing for. Without true leadership and solid vision sub-optimization is a real threat.

Organizations and decision making must be built on interaction. Sharing knowledge is essential. Collaborative tools and a new mindset enable Enterprise 2.0 and Society 2.0, accordingly.

Becoming a knowledge worker does call for a small revolution.

What then happens is nothing but magic, as Oscar Berg, a net friend of mine, beautifully put it: It's actually pretty simple.

Previously on new ways to work:
Work 2.0 comes with a revolution
Work 2.0 is collaborative
On the way to Information Society

Productivity: quantity or entity?

In some public sector strategies the aim is to improve the productivity but there is also anticipation of a new leadership.

In public sector offices instructions used to be signed by one man and then all the public and personnel obeyed. Budgeting was supposed to take these offices to a more business-like supervision.

Certain problems still prevailed. There seemed to be little or no connection between the annual actions and their budgeting; change management and project-like financing arose a problem time and time again. One thing is common in both private and public sector: sub-optimization.

Productivity is haute couture in the Aging Europe

Anja Alasilta blogged about result-based rewarding in emergency call centers (F). Quantities and rewarding seem to be an equation with few solutions in all public sector.

Productivity states that its measure should be, say, phone calls per call center worker. That rate will thus get improved only if "You just talk faster to the customer"?!

Tax Administration took the customer in the focus by early 2000's. Niche experts needed to broaden their horizons, and all of a sudden there was no point in counting bits and pieces. The real issue was to track the whole customer process. What happens to the quality of a tax return if our guidance is A, B or C?

We began to talk about the impact of our actions. Instead of viewing our own doings alone, we now search impressiveness in customer's process.

We talk about the new leadership as something that is insightful and participative for our personnel. We are looking for ways to support innovations and their dissemination. How do you do that?

What kind of organization would best support innovation?