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February
2003
 Managing
Growth
by Maura Keller
Iconoclast
Economist Tor
Dahl believes he knows what's ailing U. S. corporations
For Tor Dahl, the
lack of bottom line results in major U. S. corporations is a failure of
companies addressing deep and unresolved productivity issues. And he
should know. After devoting the majority of his life to helping
businesses and governments improve productivity, Tor Dahl and his
company, Tor Dahl & Associates is well on its way to change the way
organizations of varying size and sector, do business.
It all began about
three decades ago when Tor Dahl, a Norwegian native began studying under
the tutelage of Professor Ragnar Frisch, the first Nobel Prize winner in
economics. Frisch received his Nobel Prize in 1969 for his work in
"production function theory."
“The theory had
never been applied to the real world, so I decided to do so,” Dahl says. “My
whole career has been focused on this.”
For 11 years Dahl
served as president and chairman of the World Confederation of
Productivity Science, the leading organization for scholars, statesmen,
and business leaders in the productivity field. In 1976 he founded Tor
Dahl & Associates (www.tordahl.com),
a performance improvement firm in White Bear Lake.
So what is the
essence of Dahl’s productivity program?
“Think of an ‘impossible
goal’,” Dahl says. “Maybe it is the invisible drawing inside of you that
you always wanted to realize. If you are a company, it might be profits,
satisfied customers, market share, or safe products. If you are a
country, it may be the pillars of a self correcting market economy,
freedom, safety, and justice.”
As Dahl explains,
between “now” and the achievement of that goal is a logjam. “Each logjam
has a key log that is holding the other logs in place.” When Dahl works
with clients he teaches them that a log can only be removed if you find
its root cause. “All logs have the same root cause: A bad idea,” Dahl
says. “When you replace this with a good idea, the log goes away. That’s
why the productivity revolution is a revolution of ideas. When a logjam
is removed, productivity improvement proceeds at blinding speed.”
So what is the
biggest myth surrounding productivity that Dahl sees? “That it eliminates
jobs,” Dahl says. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Productivity
improvement secures jobs. The times of the highest productivity are the
times of lowest unemployment. It was productivity improvement that
produced the government surpluses of the nineties, the record low
inflation numbers, and the record employment rates.”
More than 400
organizations and government entities have worked with Tor Dahl &
Associates since its inception in 1976. From Fortune 100 companies to the
governments of China, Mexico and Norway, Dahl has worked with a multitude
of organizations on productivity issues.
“I once addressed
the Academica Sinica in Beijing¾the oldest and one of the
most prestigious Academies of Science in the world. They had flown in
people from all over China, to decide if ‘productivity science’ was
indeed a science. We engaged in a great debate.” As Dahl points out, not
long afterwards, China established 500 productivity centers all over the
country and in 2001, they established another 201 centers.
The “associates”
portion of Tor Dahl & Associates include about 200 certified
productivity specialists scattered all over the US and Europe. “We
compose teams when we accept a project that consist of people with deep
experience in what we do, and the sector of the project,” Dahl says.
Project budgets have ranges as low as $2,500 to as high as $2.5 million.
While Dahl plans on
accepting a few projects each year, the firm will focus on licensing and
transferring its methodology to its clients. “Much of our future will be
R&D in ‘high performance functioning,’ development of new products
and processes for our licensees, production of books and articles, and
consulting with countries on their strategies for rapid and productive
growth,” Dahl says. “I’m comfortable with growing organically for Tor
Dahl & Associates, and exponentially in licensees.”
Maura
Keller is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.
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