Govt action

  • All governments and their electorates need a National BSC – Balanced Score Card

  • One which focuses on the few key result areas that matter most at national level to the people at large

  • One such as proposed in the diagram below

National productivity

  • Clearly, well-being and productivity take centre stage here, with a government’s priority being national productivity improvement i.e. getting more goods and services out of existing labour, indigenous and imported materials, and capital resources available

  • Not only that, national productivity is not even measured well:

    • The GDP/ Labour or Hours worked measures are both seriously flawed –  their focus is on labour productivity alone,  and significant errors in quarterly GDP figures are well-known and rife making any claims of a 0.1%  change versus last quarter, say, less than credible

    • And, given the enormous cost of compiling them,  they never seem to be disputed by leading academics, economists and newspaper editors – they even use them as a firm basis for justifying their many, various and often differing theories and/ or headlines

  • So what use are national productivity measures?

    • They mean nothing to managers on the front line

    • They offer ministers no clues as to where best to act and who to support given the data are aggregates of aggregates of aggregates – it seems they only interest politicians when they make them look good and so more electable

  • The conclusion is obvious?

 

 

National productivity plans

All nations need some form of productivity plan which outlines the broad thrusts their government intends to make to improve the well-being of the maximum number of its citizens – but most do not have such a plan, and the few that do don’t let their citizens know much about it Cynics ask ‘why bother?’ …

Global productivity

 At present, the rich G7 nations tend to look after themselves first and foremost Their focus is on growth and getting richer – on increasing their own, already high, GDP and prosperity levels – they regard it as a disaster if their own GDP contracts by under 1%       N.B. GROW = Rest …

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