Contents of ‘Productivity Knowhow’

 SECTIONS 

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1. Productivity basics:

• Definitions – ‘Old’ v ‘New’ productivity – Efficiency v Effectiveness
• Why so important – for people, organisations and nations
• Current management views

2. Scope to improve:

• Performance level variations
• Private and public sector potential
• Opinion testing – Insiders’ and outsiders’ views

3. The Productivity revolution:

• Agricultural revolution
• Industrial, then Service revolutions – Globalisation
• Communication & Knowledge revolutions

4. Productivity drivers:

• Management
• Invention, Innovation & Investment
• Competition & Luck

 5.  Performance improvement process:

• Basic approach – The five essential steps
• Do things right & do right things
• Ratchet effect

6. Corporate plans:

• Why have a plan?
• Aims, Products, Markets, Resources
• Action planning – SWOT analyses, Risk management

7. Cardinal measures:

• Selection criteria
• Current performance measures
• Cardinal areas – Balanced Scorecards – Cardinal model

8. Financial cardinals:

• Accountants’ measures – Weinstock 6
• Investors’ measures – RoCE, EPS
• Revenue, Costs, Profitability – R, C, P – Dupont chart

9. Customer cardinals:

• Price Index – PI – Value For Money (VFM)
• Quality Index – QI – Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
• Service Index – SI – Overall Cycle Times (OCT)

10. Productivity & Waste cardinals:

• Productivity – Financial productivity, Unit costs, Resource productivity
• Efficiency – Capacity usage
• Waste – AUE% – Availability (A%), Utilisation (U%), Efficiency (E%)

11. Employee Motivation cardinal:

• Motivation % impact – ‘Productivity cliff’
• Theories – Hawthorne experiment, Maslow, Herzberg, McGregor
• Motivation Index – MI – Job design & working environment factors

12. Corporate Knowledge cardinal:

• Definitions – Corporate knowledge (K) – Intellectual Property (IP)
• Corporate knowledge % impact
• Knowledge Index – KI = K(AUE)%

13. Targets:

• Benchmark options – RPs, BPs, Waypoints, Goals, Dreams
• Best Practices, internal & external
• Target setting – Pitfalls

14. Performance Analyses:

• Fact finding – Where are you now?
• Option reviewing – Where best to act, when?
• Action planning – Selection of special projects

15. Special improvement projects:

• Set up – Terms of Reference, Team selection, Project planning
• Solve – Pareto, ‘Critical Examinations’, Prize-giving, ‘Goldcorp challenge’
• Implement – Communicate, Instal, Nurse

16. Organisation level improvement:

• Products & Services – Ideas, Failures, Prototyping, Diversification
• Markets & Customers – Existing & New market penetration
• Structures & People – M&As, Divestments, Downsizing

17. Process level improvement:

• Process differences – Services v Manufacturing
• Minimise waste – OCTs – Ohno’s counterintuitive
• Maximise efficiency – Work flows, Outsourcing, Big Data, IoT, AI

18. Task level improvement:

• Capacity
• Right methods, inputs, outputs and outcomes
• ‘Baumol effect’

19. Continuous improvement – CI:

• Why CI?
• CI projects – Quality Circles
• Employee suggestion schemes – GE ‘work-outs’

20. National productivity: 

• National measures – GDP, Prosperity, Productivity – Flaws
• National outputs and inputs – Labour, Materials, Energy, Capital
• Extra government action needed 

21. Global productivity:

• Economic groupings – G7/8, G20, GRoW
• Prosperity gaps – MDGs
• How to improve global productivity

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APPENDICES                            

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Productivity:

A. Global – Malthus, Club of Rome, Innovations over time, Smith v Russell, ‘Richest list’

B. National – Economists’ theories, UK economy, Boston cluster, GDP league, Zipf’s Law

C. Sectoral – Public sector job proliferation – UK Health, Education & Justice sectors

D. Organisation – Evolution of approaches, Stakeholders, BEM, Baldrige, IIP, BSC, BVPIs, Porter’s 5 forces, McKinsey’s 7 Ss, Downsizing, Culture changing, TFP/ MFP

E. Process/ Task – Evolution of approaches, PM, WS, OR, VA, OPT, PPF/ MoT, BS 5750/ ISO 9000, Quality costs, TQM, Lean, Six Sigma, BPR, Outsourcing, Examples

F. Tools – Brainstorming, Paired comparisons, Process mapping symbols, Bell curve %s

Finances:

G. Accountants’ measures – P&L, B/S, NCF, FCF, RoCE/ RoS/ Asset turn, AV, EVA, Gearing/ Working capital/ Liquidity/ Insolvency, Inventory controls, Creditor & Debtors

H. Investors’ measures – EPS/ Yield/ PER/ PEG, BV/ IV/ EV, Market capitalisation/ MV/ Margin of safety, Valuing intangible assets, Valuing Google, Stock market cycles

I. Investors’ criteria – Buffett, Bolton, Slim, Slater – The key ratio – Checklist

Markets & Customers:

J. Marketing tactics, Sales analyses, Quality & Service measures, Salesforce productivity

Products & Services:

K. Sales & Profitability by product/ service, Portfolio mix, Boston grid, Pricing

Workforces:

L. Managers – Selection criteria, Key roles, Deming’s 14 points, Ike’s grid

M. Organisation structures – Traditional, Flatter the better, Maximum layers & spans of control, Maximum team sizes, ONS occupation groupings

N. Culture – Values claimed by top companies

O. Motivation – Peters, Robson, Nelson, Trafalgar, Wellington, Tampoe, Gladwell

P. Communications – Style, Meetings, CEO speech ‘No-Nos’

Corporate knowledge:

Q. Human capital, Structure capital, Customer capital

Background:

R. Bibliography

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