A Manifesto of Human-Centered Productivity

I believe in work.

As a means of income generation, sure. But also as a means to continuous learning, to reaching one’s potential, and to a peaceful and just society.

Anything in life can be a vehicle for personal growth — why not choose the activity you spend most of the day doing anyway? Especially since our employers and clients will actually support it.

I believe work can be an act of self-expression.

It doesn’t happen automatically, but people can imbue their work with the passion, the creativity, and the purpose that give their life meaning.

This is different from doing what you love all the time. Love needs truth, and the reality into which we send our work is nothing if not truthful.

I believe productivity is an excellent sandbox for life.

Anything worth doing, and especially anything we have to do, is worth doing well. Productivity makes an excellent sandbox because it operates according to the same principles found in any other area of life.

And it leaks — success in productivity is easily translated to success elsewhere.

I believe we need a new conception of what work is.

This new conception requires careful thought and intellectual rigor. It requires sensitivity to the innate needs and abilities of humans. It will require borrowing from extremely diverse fields with an open mind.

What constrains the performance of most workers today is not their skills or creativity, but decaying institutions founded on outdated conceptions of labor.

I believe new ways of working will require radically new productivity methods.

Technology gives us unprecedented leverage, but on its own is of little value. What’s hard to change is everything that surrounds it — the rules, the mental models, the policies and procedures, the habits, the self-narratives, and the paradigms.

These things take much longer to change, and they don’t follow exponential curves. But they determine what impact a new technology has on real organizations and real people.

I believe design is very close to the core of what it means to be human.

Humans are designers. Our ability to create, to invent, to author new things is mysterious and audacious.

Which is why the field of design, very broadly defined, is one of the most fertile disciplines for us to draw on in our reinvention of productivity. Design has made technology more humane; it can do the same for productivity.

This requires, first and foremost, convincing people that they are designers, by nature if not by profession.

I believe we can design a way of working in which the interests of employees and employers are fundamentally aligned.

This hasn’t been the historical norm, but there’s no reason we can’t make it happen.

It will require new methods that leverage the unique qualities of humans, instead of suppressing them. It will require making it possible for people to bring their whole selves to work.

Organizations can become platforms for humans to reach their full potential, and in the process benefit from unleashing that immense source of energy.

I believe a new way of working will require a whole new infrastructure.

Everyone has the motive to author their own life. Most also have opportunities of one kind or another.

What they lack is the means — a set of practical tools, methods, meta-skills, frameworks, and techniques — designed to produce performance along uniquely human dimensions.

Creating a new infrastructure to produce these tools and train people in their use is one of the highest-leverage opportunities in the world today.

I believe the reinvention of work is an urgent matter

Look around the world today — how many crises and controversies can in some way be linked back to outdated conceptions of work?

The economy, jobs, education, income, quality of life, equal opportunity, social mobility, the cohesiveness of families and communities —in all these areas in which we have so much trouble making progress, the essential nature of work goes unchallenged.

I believe we urgently need a movement to reshape not only the conception of work but the institutions, organizations, contracts, and relationships that stand upon it. There’s no time to wait.

I believe the future of productivity must be human-centered.

A new definition of work must put human beings at the center. People are the means but also the ultimate end of a more productive and purposeful society.