A focus on 1% productivity can help frame the mind when talking about the Internet of Things

paul russell
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Organizations’ seeking to leverage technology like IoT to improve productivity would benefit from a sharper focus on what a 1% productivity change actually looks like — and what is required to achieve this — continuously.

Everyone talks about improving their business — whether they are a global retail bank, an inner city public hospital, a self funded charity or a startup business finding its feet.

Everyone has a way of measuring productivity to increase business results — more sales, more customers, less downtime, more patients, fewer complaints, reduced bills and so on. It is their How. How they do business. How they do what they do. How do they differentiate. How they survive and grow.

And 1% productivity growth can help more than one would imagine.

A recent conversation with a large German call center operations director made me reconsider the true value of the ‘tech’ conversation.

Asked to explain Internet of Things ( IoT ) and the business value to him to increase business results we instead discussed ‘what things run your business’ or more accurately, ‘what things do you have that make you productive’.

Not surprisingly given the business he was in, the answer ‘people, people, people’ got us immediately discussing productivity output at a macro level.

What would it mean every day to get just 1% more productivity from his business? Was this a good starting point for a discussion around technology, and specifically, the Internet of Things and all things digital platform related?

Once we got onto a common language of respective points of view, he commented that if he could sustain just a marginal dial shift of 1% he could see tangible creation of ‘new opportunity hours’ to take to his clients. Hundreds of hours in fact each month. And quite a big addressable revenue opportunity when thinking about his clients’ and annual spend and retained business models.

This got me thinking. Why did a focus on 1% make him exceptionally more in tune with what could drive his business productivity, especially given we were supposed to be talking about Internet of Things.

The challenge he had of course was steeped in complexity for his organization, and he had a smart management team focused on this already looking at aspects of human, real estate, sales incentives, use of AR/VR and so on. Yet he admitted that his immediate focus was on the big numbers and transformational digital programmes’ — not a 1% marginal shift.

In essence, all the 1% discussion did was to give us a common frame to examine the requisite parts of his business that needed to come together to ‘find these missing hours’ and ‘creating new revenue moments’. In itself, as we found out, not a straight forward thing to do, but when we did, a more successful meeting ensued, rather than the traditional technology meets business problem variety too often played out around similar conversations.

And It’s not just organizations’ like this that may reap the benefit from a similar 1% productivity lens.

“A 1% productivity gain… would add almost £20 billion to our national output. Such an increase could reduce the annual government deficit by around £8 billion, add £250 a year to the average wage packet and increase annual profits across the country by almost £3.5 billion. (Duncan Weldon, former economics correspondent of BBC Newsnight).

Contributory factors for the productivity opportunity stated by Duncan Weldon are boundless of course. The tectonic shift towards from input to outcome in service industries , what is means to become digital and adapting to Industry 4.0 opportunities, financial and market forces, and the workplace itself. No simple finger on the pulse answer.

This is why the 1% is in itself a fascinating topic for discussion.

It sharpens the discussion into what productivity actually means for the organization, because it is not always the most obvious factors — make more widgets, answer more calls, sell more things, make more money and so on.

Over simplification of a well worn story? Too marginal a story to really matter in the cold light of the day? Leaders’ are less bothered about national output statistics and cookie cutter consultative reports?

Perhaps, but at it’s heart, an organisation mirrors the complexity of a national economy . They are all complicated systems of political structure, cognitive behaviours, platform legacy, cross organisational cultures, disparate information lakes, political hotbeds, legal minefields and social expectations. Every day they wake up to ‘be more productive than the last’ — whether it’s a school, a bank, a financial market, highway or legislator — some know this well, others don’t. Some achieve this, others don’t.

Just as human beings get better at identifying with small changes to our own personal productivity and fitness (must do more steps today!), the answers often lie in the smaller numbers, not just the big ones.

So for the organisation examining ‘speed of success’ or ‘acceleration priorities’ , they may find a 1% productivity discussion” a pretty decent place to frame discussions and to get stakeholders’ to identify a common system landscape to move forward.

Perhaps the next workshop with technology partners and business unit owners would benefit from a 1% agenda so see what transpires.

Call it a catalyst to identify incremental, rapid, continuous innovation events that in turn, develop into something much bigger, the 1% Productivity Puzzle may get close to the bigger rewards for all. Much more than 1% in fact.

paul russell

Written by

Happiest helping anyone who may listen how the technology/business conversation is changing. Realise it's a lifetime quest - enjoying the journey so far.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade