MU Insight Survey 2012 Change and Productivity

Avoiding productivity loss
We did not exactly know what to expect, when asking
managers for their estimation about productivity
loss in their company during a change process. But
we had an idea from listening with our clients worldwide.
And it proved right: 43% seemed to us an honest
figure – and yet at the same time an alarming one.
Practically speaking, for 2 out of 5 days, people are
prevented from contributing to results by a change
process, in half of all companies. Of
course nobody intended this, so the obvious
questions arise:
What are people doing, if they are not
able to contribute? What is stopping
them? If they are not able to be successful
with their work, what is going on?
Although there is a certain span between
Sweden’s 26% and Portugal’s 54%
impairment on productivity, from a
business perspective addressing this
productivity ‘crisis’ is not only an exercise
of optimisation, but more a matter of fundamentally
rethinking setups, goals and
procedures. The quality of change processes needs
improving. So how can we make things work better?
Our goal was to try to find some solutions.
From our respondents’ point of view, there are 3
measures outnumbering others, when dealing with
productivity loss. First of all, making the goals and
strategies of change-processes more transparent
was named. Additionally, managers expected
increasing participation of middle and first-level
management during the conception and planning
of change measures would help them to avoid
productivity loss. And for 2 out of 5 managers, new
technology, IT and software all facilitate productivity
in change.
Turning the focus on people, managers again see an
intensive need for a broad range of personal capabilities
and skills.
We did not ask if managers think they could change
the personality of people. For more than 40 years
Total
The employee’s goal orientation 76,2%
The employee’s professional expertise 71,5%
The employee’s ability to work under pressure 67,3%
The employee’s stamina 63,3%
The employee’s ability to convince others 62,6%
The employee’s self-assuredness 62,4%
The employee’s influence on others 62,1%
The employee’s degree of informal integration 56,8%
of management consulting, we know our answer to
that question. From our point of view another question
becomes rather interesting though, and in it lies
the answer to reducing productivity loss through
change:
How do you identify and arrange the capabilities that
your people have (or don’t have), to secure successful
changes today and in the future?
In the table above you can see what it is it about people
that enables them to deliver change results and
maintain productivity.