Meeting the Productivity Challenge of The 21st Century

Business Week called Peter Drucker 'The Man Who Invented Management', and on the topic of Productivity he said this 

The most important and indeed truly unique contribution of management in the 20th Century was the fifty fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker age.

In meeting this challenge, one comes face to face with the productivity paradox - namely, that in today's world, it's both easier and harder to achieve extraordinary productivity. Research tells us that over the past 50 years, the productivity difference between the top 1% of a workforce and the bottom 1% has grown from 3x as much to 12x as much to now, potentially ∞, which suggests that this top 1% each of the opportunity to make an extraordinary or breakthrough contribution that could be transformative for their business.  

A question then to pose is, if 1% are currently in the position to make this breakthrough contribution, how many others throughout an organisation could also be? Perhaps not the remaining 99%, or even 50%, but (allowing for good recruitment and development systems) what if it is 10-20%, and what if it was possible to tune just 10% of this 10-20% in to their potential and help them plan to make this happen. The upshot for any organisation is that rather than 1% making breakthrough contributions, 2-3% could be, and if you double or triple the number of breakthrough contributions being made, it could be transformative for the business.

In terms of where to start, Peter Drucker also provided a clue when (referring to the knowledge worker age) he said

For the first time, substantial and rapid growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time people have to manage themselves and we are totally unprepared for it. 

FranklinCovey's latest work in this area has been distilled into 5 Choices that enable extraordinary productivity, and as well as creating an awareness in people as to what these choices are, the approach we take of combining 'principles' or 'truths' of effectiveness with a learning and personal change process that is modern and engaging and which people feel they can realistically follow is what seems to provoking the greatest excitement.