Rethinking Productivity: Process vs Outcome

Rethinking Productivity: Process vs Outcome

00:45 Productivity is an Illusion

Productivity. If all we’re thinking about when we say productivity is the word output, that is to say we want to get output, then we are really only looking at one side of productivity, because what is it that productivity produces? What is it that it produces?

There is process and there’s outcome.

And I’m going to put it to you that the process is the outcome. If the process of attaining to output, output means you come up with something, what are you coming up with? Goods or services. One of those two things, either goods or services, is the output that is desired when someone says, “I want productivity.”

That’s output.

Process. If productivity is not seen as a process of creating productive citizens, that is to say people who are enjoying what they’re doing, who are working together willingly, willingly surrendering their preferences to be elsewhere, but who are attracted like little bees to a beehive, who just love being bees, if there’s not that kind of attraction, then productivity is a complete illusion, because it’s carving a path of destruction through society.

We need to get super productive, so we look at various kinds of iconic ways of not doing things. If we look at the early industrial revolution, and even today, of course today, but less of a percentage, it would be at all costs to whomever it is that’s doing the work. Minimal pay, just enough pay to make it worthwhile showing up. Maximum output, whatever that may be, a product, goods or services.

And then whomsoever it is that’s purveying the output to the consumer world is the one who gets the greatest benefit from it. Even if it has a killing effect on those who are engaged in the output, who cares? I have productivity.

That’s not real productivity. That’s really carving a swathe through society, cutting across the interests of everyone in order to get a short-term gain for a few, where a few get a short-term gain and the cost of it is a social cost that’s unsustainable.

04:01 Making Participation Attractive

So when we’re looking at productivity, we have to look at process and outcome both. How to create an environment where people actually want to participate in the mission, where they wake up each morning and think, “I can’t wait to get there because I have a role that is valuable. I sense my role and what’s valuable. I see it in the world when I move around. I can see the result of the work that I do. And it’s really, I’m being a benefit.”

Then those who are the ones desirous of productivity, whomsoever is the corporation or organization or whatever that’s wanting people to be productive, needs to also see that they’re creating ideal citizens. People who have a sense of place, people who have a sense of purpose, people who are able to derive enough income for themselves that they’re able to actually live lives that are memorable, that are worth living.

There also has to be the element of upward mobility. Could you start somewhere and make your way through inspiration to the top of whatever that is? Or is there a ceiling, either a glass ceiling, like one that nobody talks about, a ceiling of capacity to move upward? Or is there real freedom to move upward? Is there potential for if you do this work and you are productive and then, after having attained to a certain degree of proficiency, that you might depart from that organization with a great reference to go somewhere else where you have upward mobility?

So is that a possibility?

In other words, what is the attraction? Make it worth the while of those who you wish to participate in it.

06:23 Great Output Comes from Healthy Process

And so there are organizations in the world that are iconic. I don’t want to mention them by name because I don’t want to sound like I’m advertising anybody. But there are organizations in the world that have actually achieved this, where people are well-paid, it’s highly desirable, they have fantastic health benefits, they have had fantastic upward mobility.

They’re made to feel as though they are important people and they can sense that and see that. They feel as though they’re part of a tribe, and I think that’s a very important thing. There’s a culture that they buy into and they love the culture. And there are living and recreational elements of working for that organization that make it absolutely a highly desirable and attractive place.

It’s a beehive. It’s like a beehive. Everyone’s working, everyone’s producing, everybody knows exactly where they fit into the program, and they just find themselves like they would never think about going anywhere else.

And those companies that I’m thinking about, without naming, there are one or two of them, and I think some of you can probably guess at it if you know something about industry, are the highest market capital in the world. The highest market capital in the world. And so that means the richest companies on Earth.

And how did they get to be that way?

Well, it’s because when you work there, it’s not really family per se. It’s almost more like a sporting team. You feel like you’re a member of a team, and something is happening which is very exciting and you’re involved in it.

Now, if we want to talk about the potential for productivity, it’s not just output. I can also refer you, without naming any because I don’t want to sound condemnatory, there are organizations and companies nobody would want to work there, except people who are so poor that they would find it impossible to ignore the offer for absolute minimum wage, minimum income.

They’re not trusted by the organization. They’re policed strongly by the organization. They can be fired at a whim. There’s fear-based administration.

And these organizations also are interested only in output. They’re not interested in culture. They have nothing to do with culture.

And I’m going to put it to you that those businesses will be out of business in the short term, because there’s no room for that. That’s not an evolutionary model.

And so if we want to have productivity, we have to get this word of output out of our mind. The first thing is good process always will lend itself to great output.

Great output will come from healthy process. And healthy process is going to be all about culture, organizational culture or corporate culture.

Either way, if it’s a great culture that people see, they’re attracted to it. People will do the work of ten people. Each one will do the work of ten people.

You’ll find in a place like that that the lights are staying on way after hours because people are enjoying being at work. They love it. They’d rather be there than go out for dinner with friends, not because they’re earning anything extra, but because they just really believe in the mission.

10:17 The Four Aspects of Organizational Mission

And so what we see, what I see when I consult to top companies and top organizations, is a failure of that top company and that top organization, whatever it may be. I say organization because sometimes these are government bodies or they are nonprofit organizations, not just corporates, not just profit-making companies.

One of the first things I ask them is, “Can you recite to me,” this is speaking to the C-suite, C-suite means chief executive, or chief financial officer, CFO, or chief somebody, there are all these different chiefs. I only talk to the C-suite. I don’t talk to anybody else. “Can you recite to me what your company mission is?”

And very often, all I get on their face is like a giant red question mark. Like, “Huh, what did you say?”

“Can you recite to me what is the mission of the company, of the organization?”

And some of them will have memorized like two or three lines that they remember from somewhere, but they will say something like, “Well, we do this because we want to sell this.”

And I go, “That’s not the mission. What’s the mission?”

And most people don’t understand anything about this idea of the word mission.

What’s the mission? Mission is a thing. The first consumer of it has to be those who work there. People who work there need to be able to see that mission, understand what it is, and believe in it. They have to feel included in it.

And so a mission has to be created democratically by all of those, and agreed to by all of those who work in the place, not just the CEO or the owner of the organization or the company.

And so mission has three or four aspects to it.

The first aspect is, let’s describe ourselves. Who are we? Who are the people who work here? What is the talent base that we have working here? So self-description, who are we?

Second thing, what is our ethic? What is it we stand for? What is it we would agree is a good thing, and what is it that we would agree is not a good thing? And that needs to be defined. And so the ethos is what we call that.

And then the next thing is, what are the opportunities that we see? Let’s agree on what the opportunities are.

And then the fourth thing is, what are we doing about it? Action. What’s the action that we’re willing to engage in?

And then when you have those four things all in a few sentences where you’ve named them, you’ve actually named this, and this, and everybody who works there can look at that and say, “Yeah, that describes what I’m doing here every day.”

And if people look at that and they say, “That doesn’t describe what I’m doing here every day,” then that company or that organization is off mission. They’re not actually working to a mission. And so that fourfold process of mission…

And very often, and I would say probably in about ninety percent of cases, when I’m hired to work for the C-suite of a big organization, I’ll ask them about mission and they just get a blank look on their face, or a question mark.

Or they show me something from eighteen thirty-six or whatever, which was back when there were still slaves in the United States, for example. This example. This is our mission. You can’t even read that. It’s not even in modern English.

14:15 Make Everybody a Believer of the Mission

Mission is a thing that may need to be reconstructed and re-visioned once or twice a decade, because sometimes there is a shift in the corporate mentality and in the collective that’s making up that group of people who, whether they’re working from home or they’re working in centralized locations, they have a sense of purpose of actually getting the work done, doing the thing.

And it’s important that this is something which everybody could look at and say, “So the first client of mission is, we all agree to this. This is what we’re about.”

And then the last client of it is the consuming population who are consuming whatever it is that this group of people are supposed to be producing every day. They should also be able to look at the mission and say, “Oh, so that’s who you are. Okay.”

“Because that’s who you are, that’s your ethos, that’s what you stand for, that’s who the people are, what you stand for, those are the opportunities you see, this is what you’re doing about it. Fantastic. I want to buy your toothpaste,” or whatever it is that is being produced. “I want to be involved in that.”

And so the truth about productivity, usually what happens is nobody thinks about this very much until already there are encrusted formats being engaged in in an unsustainable way.

And big organizations are very guilty of this. They have no real intelligible, expressible concept about what they’re about. They don’t really know what they’re about. All they know is, “We’ve got this stuff to do and you guys have to show up.”

And so there’s no tribal vision. There’s no sense of that being a tribe that you would want to be involved in or be a part of.

So it needs to be rethought, not just in terms of, “Okay, we do a thing, we make a thing, or we provide a service, and we’ve got to get it done, and we’ve got to get it over the line and get it out there to the market that’s going to consume it. And whatever it takes to do that, we’ll do that.”

That’s the usual very slapstick, completely unsustainable, awkward way of running any kind of an organization.

But I hate to say it, it is the most common way. The most common way is you just don’t think about it and just slap-dash, “Let’s get stuff done and get over the line and get it out to the people.”

And what’s happening to the people who work for us and with us? Don’t know. Don’t really care, until there’s a problem.

Everyone goes on strike. “I guess we have a problem because nobody seems to understand what we need to get done and we’re running out of money and we’re running out of time and these people want too much and there’s problems, problems, problems.”

So the big organizations that I have worked for that are amongst the wealthiest organizations on Earth, they don’t have strikes. Nobody ever strikes, and it’s not because they couldn’t. They certainly could if they wanted to.

But everybody is a believer in the mission. Everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks, “It’s so fantastic, I work here. I’m going to get to work half an hour early today because I love it. And when it’s time for me to quit, I might quit at that time or I might even stay later because I absolutely love it. It’s an absolute dream working in this place. And we’re doing a thing that everybody in the world loves, and people love to consume our products and our services.”

That’s what we want. That’s productivity. And that is what has been proven to work. If your way of measuring it is that it’s up and running for decades and consistently at the absolute top of the market, consistently at the top of the market.

18:48 The Role of Vedic Meditation in Organizational Productivity

So productivity is a deep and a highly important subject.

What Vedic Meditation has to offer to it is that it could be part of an organizational or corporate culture. Not that it’s required of everyone to learn Vedic Meditation, not at all. But certainly as either a curricular or extracurricular offering to those who would like to try it.

Something that I always consider when organizations talk to me about installing a meditation program for employees is that first of all they nominate, the company nominates, a group of people who they think could be interested. I go in and give an introductory talk about what Vedic Meditation is, and then it’s based purely on hands up, who would like to give it a try?

And then those who would like to give it a try, they have to make part of the contribution to the cost of it. It has to be borne by the employee, part of that. And the other part will be borne by the company. So the employees feel as though they also have some investment in it, in learning the meditation technique and making it active in their lives.

Another thing that I suggest to corporations is spouse involvement. Rather than if you’re an employee here, one of your options as an employee is to learn Vedic Meditation, we’re going to make it available to your partner, to your spouse as well.

If you can get your spouse involved, then we’ll also look after, say fifty percent, just to name a figure, of your spouse’s involvement or learning Vedic Meditation.

Because the idea there is that it’s not fair for somebody, for a singular person, to appear at work and get to learn Vedic Meditation, come home and tell about it to their spouse, but the spouse doesn’t have access to it.

And so to make it accessible to spouses as well has been a very popular thing to do. And it also means that when people go home from work, their partner is also ready to practice the evening technique or morning technique the next morning of Vedic Meditation, to awaken full mental potential, to release accumulated stress, and all of the great benefits that come from Vedic Meditation.

So Vedic Meditation, I think, is going to be an essential component of any kind of corporate or organizational mission.

And the well-being, the psychic and physiologic benefits of Vedic Meditation need to be looked at as something that’s going to keep the wheels of productivity turning.

As I have mentioned in a very brief introduction to this subject, Vedic Meditation has been demonstrated to improve in four or five major areas that go into productivity.

Job satisfaction is improved. Relations with coworkers improve. Relations with supervisors improve. Job turnover decreases. Absenteeism decreases.

And all of these things amount to greater productivity. They are telling of a happy employee, a happy participant in a group activity, people who really feel as though they’re making a contribution to a group effort.

So that’s what I think about productivity and mission and all of those things that can make an organization successful.

23:02 Q: Are Corporate Missions Manipulative?

I can’t help but feel like there’s some manipulation in it with big corporations, that they just want you to be productive, but at their expense.

Yeah, just.

[You mean to their benefit, not their expense.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. “I’m going to make you happy, but because it’s…”

23:23 A: Use Your Discrimination Capability

If you spot that, don’t go there. Best defense is not to be there.

[Yeah.]

Anytime you feel as though you’re being manipulated, my definite advice to you is don’t get involved.

But if you feel good about it, you really do feel good about it, there’s altruism. And I think this is also a very important thing for those who are contemplating working with any group of people.

You have to use your creative intelligence and your discrimination capability to decide, where’s the altruism in this?

And of course, anytime you work with a group, there is a certain surrender of preference. We’d rather be at home in our garden with the sun shining on us and having everything brought to our door at no cost. That would be fantastic.

But if we can’t make those arrangements, then we are going to have to surrender preferences in some way, to a certain extent, and participate in a group format.

So then we also, as people who are potential employees, or contractors if you’re a contractor, we have to feel as though we’re invited to make a worthwhile contribution to a group effort.

And anytime you feel there’s sneakiness or lack of transparency or greed, anything like that, those are the hallmarks of stay away from that place. There’s always something better for you.

25:07 Q: How do we reconcile ease with being productive?

And what about the obsession in this culture in general to be productive? Like you have to do so many things. And how does that work with our do nothing, accomplish everything?

25:23 A: Frictionless Flow Feels Effortless

 It should feel like you’re doing nothing.

When you’re really in the right place, doing the right thing, it doesn’t feel like work, it feels like play. You play.

You know yourself that whether you’re working for yourself or you’re working for an organization, if all the conditions are right, it feels like you’re doing nothing. In fact, you’d rather be there than being at home reading the newspaper on your telephone. It’s more enjoyable.

And so we have to go with that kind of frictionless flow, the frictionless flow.

26:03 Q: Can we trade off being productive for stillness?

And we relate productivity to corporate, to business, to work ethic all the time. And there’s just that pull sometimes to always be doing something.

[Yeah.]

And I was interested in your perspective on the pondering on creativity and carving time to be still rather than be active for the sake of productivity, and how meditation supports that, and how it can actually enhance other things as well as being productive in business.

26:46 A: Get corporate support or choose personal control

You know, I think we also have to each of us think, what is it that we feel more drawn to? Do we feel more drawn to working with a group that have a mission to produce particular goods or services, and having a kind of being a part of a corporate culture, or do we prefer to be self-employed?

And what does that mean? It means you’re the boss, and you’re the boss of yourself.

But even if you are the boss of yourself, eventually as you get more and more successful, you’re going to have to have a corporate culture because there’ll be people working for you.

And then you’re going to be the one that everybody’s saying, “Should I work for this person or is this person just greedy?”

It’ll end up being you at the top.

If what you do is successful, you can’t do anything all that dramatic or helpful in the world all on your own. You’re going to end up having to have people working with you.

So yes, that.

The process of doing any kind of activity with the idea being to improve upon the experiences that are available to you, the basket of goods and services that you have access to.

Everybody has some idea about, “I would like to have a basket of goods and services, things I would like to experience in my basket that I’d like to have access to.”

How are you going to get that?

If you can figure out a way of doing it without reference to anybody else, my advice is do that.

But if it’s going to involve other people who already have a setup who are invitational to you, then by all means do that.

But the means to an end, the means to bringing about the filling of that basket of goods and services that you would like to have, should also be one that enhances and embraces your creativity.

I would say that any organization that doesn’t have in its culture room for expression of creativity, or room for expression of recreation, or room for expression or periods of silence, I strongly recommend that organizations all have a meditation space.

A space where people can appear at work and during work hours, during paid time, they can go and sit and meditate somewhere on the company premises. And before leaving paid time, before going home, there’s a place on the company premises where they can sit and practice their meditation.

Why?

Because this is the company showing you that they also believe in your wellbeing and they’re willing to pay you to sit and practice a technique that will not only enhance your brain functioning for them, but also for whatever happens after you go home, or when you’ve arrived from home after dropping your kids off at school or whatever you’ve been doing.

You don’t arrive at work and then you’re just like, the whip is cracking and you’re slaving away. But you can arrive at work, enhance your creative intelligence while being paid to do it.

And I strongly recommend companies and organizations to demonstrate that they believe in it to that extent. If they’re going to invest in people learning Vedic Meditation, they should also invest in a space and also invest in the time that they give their employees to actually practice the technique on site, if that’s what they wish to do.

Not that they have to do it, but if they wish to opt for that, that’s available.

Otherwise, if all of this corporate stuff gives us the creeps, then be self-employed. But watch out, you’re going to become an employer, and you’ll be giving other people the creeps, unless you start really paying attention to mission and all the things that I mentioned earlier in my talk on productivity.

31:26 Q: How can we remove the pressure to feel productive in life?

So this is a question on productivity, but not so much in work, but in general, in life. Sometimes there’s a pressure to be productive as a whole person, like I have to exercise and I have to be social and I have to read and I have to do all these things.

And sometimes I find myself feeling guilty if I’m not keeping up with a certain standard of productivity in general. And so if you could just talk about that.

32:01 A: I Get To…

Yes. Anytime it’s “I have to,” anytime have to comes into it, then something wrong is going on. It has to be “I get to.”

I get to be active. I get to exercise. I get to display my creativity. These are my outlets. This is what I prefer. So look at me, how fortunate I am. I get to do all this stuff.

If it comes down to “I have to, I have to, I have to,” this shows a tired mind. This is the product of a tired mind. A very fatigued and tired mind always thinks, “My whole life is have to. I have to do this. I have to do that.”

Where we want to be, and even if we are practitioners of Vedic Meditation, we can get into that have-to mentality, it means we need to go away for a retreat and have some industrial-strength Vedic Meditation, and really peel away all that fatigue and all of that.

And then arrive into a state where, without being told to, we do feel like counting our blessings. How great it is that we get to do these things, not that we have to do them.

So anytime we start to feel the drudgery of have to, have to, have to, it means we’re being loaded with fatigue and we need to peel off that fatigue and awaken.

And it may be that we also have to refresh our personal mission, our personal mission.

The moment we begin to feel that there’s social pressure for you to be something more than what spontaneously you are, you have to remember the word enough.

You are enough, actually as you are.

If you’re not enough as you are, anyone who’s expecting more of you can just go somewhere else. They’re invited to go and find whatever it is they’re looking for elsewhere.

I remember seeing a beautiful t-shirt once on a woman who was in the coffee shop and it just said on it, “I’m enough.” And I just thought that was fantastic. I love that word enough.

Sufficient. This is it. What you see is what you get. Take it or leave it. I prefer that you leave it.