Soaring

 We have never worked in a company where we have not been able to identify at least a three hundred percent performance improvement potential.

 That is easy.

 It is IMPLEMENTING that potential that is thought to be difficult.  The main reason for that is resistance to change.

 But I know someone who quit a job she loved, moved to a strange town she hated, and left a circle of close and treasured friends behind.  Yet she was utterly and completely happy.  Why?  She was in love.

 To fall in love with change occurs when the change itself makes you far better off than you were before.

 Two-thirds of our negative stress and dissatisfaction related to work is caused by non-productive behavior:  Doing things no one ever should be doing; doing things that could be done better and faster and more cheaply by others; doing things that should be planned better, or executed better; and being forced to wait for decisions or supplies.

 Learning stress management to cope with these unproductive tasks teaches you to be happy with unproductive behaviors.

 Getting rid of those unproductive tasks means getting rid of most of your stress and dissatisfaction at work.

 If these tasks consume three-quarters of your time at work, then you should be able to do your current work in one-fourth of the time, with little of no stress or dissatisfaction. 

If you want to fill the freed time with what you currently do, your productivity will increase by 300%.

But if you fill the freed time with doing more of what makes for high value productivity, and then add new things that add even more value, two things will happen:

1.      You will become hundreds of per cent more productive than you were before; and

2.      You will be even more satisfied – and less stressed – than you were before.

Where do these insights come from?

 On the average, America has increased its productivity by about two percent (in real terms) per worker-hour for 130 years.  Thus, our real income has increased by more than 450% in the 76 years since 1929.

So, if you are average, you will become 2% more productive every year, and by the time you are ready to retire, after forty years at work, you are at least 120% more productive than when you started.

 These 120% may just go away with you.

But if you can gather all the hard-earned experience and insight from everyone at work, it takes only twenty people to produce four centuries of experience.  It is THIS experience, all in the form of stories and anecdotes and burned-into-the-consciousness experiences, that must be gathered and shared for people to learn about -- and then believe in -- their own potential.

 Believing is seeing.

 You will learn more about productivity in ninety days than you could have learned in ninety years . . ..

 I remember a company slated to be closed because of its financial situation.  To survive, the company had to become at least thirty-five percent more productive, or all the jobs would be lost.

 Sharing their experience, workers and engineers increased the speed of the plant throughput by 50%.  Bringing in distributors, they forged new relationships with the sales team.  Helping their customers solve their problems increased sales even further. Applying what they had learned to their supply chain cut their costs. 

Safety improved, defects were dramatically reduced, morale lifted, and the bottom line exploded with black ink – satisfied customers came for plant visits to thank the workers.

 Here is what a member of the High Performance Team wrote about the experience:

I think that the greatest part of the . . . process was the fact that everyone felt they had a say in what was happening.  You didn’t have the Upper Management dictating to the production floor the changes that were going to be made.  The Production Floor personnel were the ones who actually did the jobs day to day.  They were able to give suggestions and voice their opinions, and it gave them a sense of belonging and ownership.

I think that the greatest thing I can say that happened to me personally because of  . . . the High Performance Team was that it made me “step out of my box” – my “comfort zone,” and realize that I was actually capable of so much more than I ever thought.

 We all are.

 And when it happens, our spirits soar.