Hacking Organizations' Unproductiveness

The system that most companies operate with today no longer works! In the United States alone, more than US$700 billion a year is lost due to a lack of productivity management.

For years, those who lead organizations have been monitoring their management using measurable and comparable metrics to determine if during a certain period they grew, remained the same or did not reach their goals. The monitoring of metrics has come from a management leveraged in work philosophies and methodologies that range from total quality, kaizen, six sigma or the implementation of various certifications to ensure compliance with processes and the quality of products or services. 

The complexity of the metrics and methodologies increased as the market, legal context and technology evolved. As the management systems were insufficient to maintain a process of productive advancement, the same companies began to adapt changes, transformations, reorganizations or reengineering processes with the infinite desire to seek greater productivity. All this meant a great advance and average growth, but with a curve that in time resembles the behavior of the stock market; that is, a process with high and low peaks.

Now in the first decade of the new century, we are surprised by the new digital business models that are causing a new revolution. The most risky and disruptive entrepreneurs quickly add their companies to the trend. In turn, we see that the large organizations that once had a traditional model do not resist migrating to the new model, leaving behind what has been a source of wealth for years.

Although the pre-pandemic world was experiencing its best economic moment, at a global level, organizations such as the UN warned that over-exploitation of resources was hurting the generation of sustainable wealth over time.  For this reason, the sustainable development goals were established and created a clear roadmap for governments, organizations and the society to do their best effort to achieve these goals.

Having experienced so many changes and evolution in the way of managing an organization, even leaders ask themselves questions about what else they should do to achieve more with the same resources or achieve the same with less, but now with the need to do it in a sustainable way.

The new leader in organizations must now also become the hacker of unproductivity. In other words, he/she must have the ability to enter little explored aspects of the organization to find solutions that allow you to scale, sustain, and be productive. Right now, and having reached a point of no return, the real hackers of unproductivity are strategists who are building on past experiences and projecting their future management on two key pillars: new technology-based exponential business models and the continuous well-being of talent in organizations.

On the one hand, exponential technologies are allowing new business models to be discovered with a disruptive level not previously imagined. With this, consumption habits have been modified, consciously or unconsciously. In some cases, these habits were driven by a society that demands simpler, but hyper-personalized models; in other cases, they were proposed by companies that found the possibility of scaling and erasing all kinds of borders, in real time, with innovative forms of payment and with increasingly lower production costs.

Furthermore, the well-being of employees is the driving vehicle that allows employees to give the best version of themselves to navigate today's uncertain times. And it is this well-being that is the strongest and most powerful column of organizations, where only strategists dare to intervene. Until recently, the relationship between productivity and well-being in organizations could only be proven from scientific experimentation or by analyzing success stories, and this made it seem like an abstract area that few paid attention to. To date, unique tools that enable continuous wellness monitoring are helping to reduce the high costs of inefficient quality of life programs. Furthermore, these tools are helping to trigger high levels of creativity and commitment in employees, essential characteristics in the new business ecosystem. It is these tools that are leading organizations to have a means of sustainable productivity over time, regardless of the challenging context that companies are facing.

More about the author:

Byron Amores

Co-fundador de Habits.ai

Embajador de Singularity University Santiago Chapter

Forum Líder Executive Forums