Each month, “Anschuetz on Leadership” episodes look at unique ways for businesses to approach leadership. Christian Anschuetz is an adventurer, entrepreneur, and United States Marine Corps Captain (not on active duty). He’s been a CIO, CDO, and founded a nonprofit to help connect military veterans with business leaders for mutually beneficial outcomes. Today, Christian and Bob discuss declining productivity across workforces in the United States and consider factors that may be contributing to these staggering rates. Additionally, the two emphasize the importance of culture within an organization, given that culture lends itself to productivity.
Episode 20 | Combatting Declining Productivity
The Big Themes:
- Declining rates of productivity: For five consecutive quarters, productivity rates in the United States have been steadily declining. In the most recent quarter, it was down nearly 3%. “It’s very clear worker productivity is in jeopardy, or so we say as corporations.”
- Work from home may be a factor: Employers are facing economic and market pressures. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that remote work styles are contributing to the lack of productivity. Is this the case?
- Culture and engagement: What creates increased levels of productivity? Christian suggests that deep engagement and investment in employees can combat declining productivity rates. Bob and Christian emphasize the importance of culture and note the ways in which a strong culture in the workforce can drive empathy, and yield better results.
The Big Quote: “The number one thing that drives productivity is engagement. But why do we not have engagement? Now think about this… why do we not have engagement? Well, why don’t we just back up a bit and say, what drives good engagement? Well, if you were to look at some of the studies out there, some of the studies would say, maybe there’s three, four things, you know, that really drive engagement. One is a top-down dedicated effort to grow and develop your workforce. Hmm, that’s interesting. So you, you’re growing and developing, that’s not paying a paycheck. That’s not growing and developing, everybody that thinks you’re doing that. This means developing, you are investing in time, you’re investing money… but I can’t do that they’re already not productive enough. Oh, okay. You see when we get confused so easily? So one of the factors is invest and develop your people. Oh, here’s another one. This is really weird. Teach your managers and leaders to manage and lead.”
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