In Physics, work is said to have been done when a force moves an object through a distance in the direction of the force. Unless and until these conditions are met, energy is said to have been wasted but no work done. That is what happens when in an organization, people engage in activities or seem to be engaged in activities but achieve little or nothing. So productivity is obviously different from activity. People are paid for work done not for energy wasted or space occupied.
There are productive and non productive activities. Unless and until you understand what constitutes productive activity on your job, you could be thinking you are awesome and you do a great job and there is none like you in the world; only to be surprised when your manager evaluates you and rates you as ‘development needed’. Has this happened to anybody here? Managers and employees are always at variance in their opinions of job performance.
Most people would go home after their evaluation with the conclusion that the manager wants to get rid of them. Of course we live in an irresponsible generation where nobody takes responsibility for poor performance. When things go well, everybody wants a share of the praise. When things go wrong, it is someone else’s faults. People would swear by their dead grandfathers, that they have no part in the error. If it is not that you didn’t tell them, it is that they were distracted by the customer or that you didn’t explain it properly. It’s got to be your fault or someone else’s. Often times you hear ‘ it is not my fault’. This has become a common rhetoric in most of nowadays human societies, unfortunately.
But businesses don’t succeed by making excuses. Businesses thrive when people take responsibilities and ownership of the pieces of the job whether it is done well or not. By taking responsibility, you make adjustments and take necessary steps to make sure mistakes don’t occur again. By making excuses and distancing yourself from error of omission or commission, you arrogate excellence to yourself and make yourself look better than you actually are. A lot of people are obsessed about looking good rather than being good at their jobs.
The other part is this. If you call someone out for making a mess or an error, they come back at you in a vicious manner with a reminder of an error or an omission you made years ago. Instead of admitting the error of the moment, apologizing and making it right and moving on, they spend the rest of the day reminding you how they are better than you are and how you don’t qualify to point out the error that was just made. They turn the blame around and the ‘hunter becomes hunted’. Is this familiar?
Productivity is evaluated using different metrics. Unless you are measuring at or above those standard metrics, you are just making motion but no movement, wasting energy but doing no work; occupying space but being unproductive; increasing bills but decreasing revenue; appearing alive but dead in productivity. With due respects to you and your opinion of yourself, as far as that job or position is concerned, you are wasting that space. Often times 20% of the people do 80% of the job and the rest just do the minimum to get bye and wait for paychecks. They count hours they have put in without asking ‘what value have I added in those hours?’’. Anybody been in those kind of teams?
What to do as a value added employee is sit back and take stock. Rediscover the essential duties of your job and make sure you hold yourself to accounts on how well you measure on those counts that count. If you don’t know what counts or if you count what does not count, only time separates you from that job or position or career. Fasting and praying, meditation and invocation, prophesying and declaring, will not save you on the day of reckoning.
No employer wants to pay for your activities; they want to pay for your productivity. Don’t forget, if you want an employer to pay you $20 an hour, you must be willing and capable of delivering $40 an hour in productivity. The difference pays for the rest of the overhead and your employers profitability. Business is and should be a profitable venture. If all you can make for your employer is what he pays you why does he need you? Think about it, if your employee makes for you $20/hr and you pay him $20/hr you are bankrupt already. Who runs a business like that?
So anytime I hear someone say ‘ I am worth a lot more than they pay me ‘, I say ‘that’s a no brainer’. If you are not worth a lot more and you don’t bring a lot more than your paycheck to the table why would you take your paycheck from the table and who do you expect to pay for the table?
In my 20 years of work across three continents I have concluded that many people misconstrue activity for productivity. Those are entirely two different phenomena. While one is a waste of time and space, the other adds value to time and space. Understand the difference and don’t put your family and loved ones in a bind. More so, we work, not just to be productive but to add value to time. Time wasted is life wasted. Unless you have value for time, you cannot be successful in anything you lay your hands to do. Think !
Respect, Love and peace!
@MezieOkolo Public Health and Leadership Analyst
11/30/2019