What I find most difficult about Western concepts is 'productivity.' They attach so many things to this fictional concept. It's about designing things to produce a large volume of output.
That's why so many posts on HN always include the same pattern, 'productivity.' I clicked thinking it would be about the social physics of conversation, like how to engage people socially or avoid hurting them, but instead it drifts into the concept of 'productivity.'
But no matter how much I think about it, I don't believe productivity is a solid, tangible thing, the way people talk about it as if it were
> But no matter how much I think about it, I don't believe productivity is a solid, tangible thing, the way people talk about it as if it were
It's rooted in Taylorism / Management Science which is good at attaching metrics to the "factors of production" and correlating those to outputs.
But it doesn't have any easy numbers to attach to morale, motivation, loyalty or conscientiousness. These are all human factors that will have a real impact on your business.
Despite paying lip service to all these qualities corporations in the modern era either conveniently hide them under the rug or game them with lazy metrics that ultimately suffer a devastating collapse under Goodharts law.
Picking up a religious text will teach you more about dealing with people than these articles written by MBAs.
Thanks for the good keyword. I'd never heard of Taylorism before. I looked it up and it seems to be an approach that breaks everything down into measurable metrics. I didn't know the term, but I think I was somewhat familiar with the concept. Thanks for teaching me something I didn't know.
I think we've all had a lot of experiences like this. When people try to explain that 'good atmosphere' and 'friendly communities' lead to better output, and then try to force that into their own metrics, that's when all the problems start. That's what you mentioned and what I often call Goodhart's law.
And on top of that, there seems to be a desire for recognition and prestige. People want to be seen as the one who explained this concept.
We seem to have this drive to abstract people and teams and processes, we call it Taylorism, Scientific Management, with an end result of being able to declare with scientific assurance this person, this group is not carrying their expected load. Now, this is a lot of work, and this is not really necessary if these groups actually had open and trusted communications. But we rare to never have trust, real trust between work teams and work peers. So, rather than expend the effort to create such trust and do the hard work of creating high functioning teams, we create a tracking surveillance environment where your hamster wheel must spin as fast as everyone else, or you are fired. And that is why so many companies have so much busy work while never really going anywhere.
Everyone knows this to some extent. 'Good atmosphere' and 'good community'.
it's true that these things are great for productivity. But the question is, once you try to measure them, do they actually get better?
People aren't stupid. They can tell the difference between genuine communication and small talk, and there's a gap between field work and theory.
In practice, people usually trust someone who's 'reliable,' but management discourse believes that these things can be quantified, modeled, reported, and managed. Honestly, I see that as a religion.
What exactly is a 'good atmosphere'? Survey scores? Team comparisons? Manager evaluations? This is exactly Goodhart's law. The moment a measurement becomes a target, the thing you originally wanted to measure becomes distorted.
That's why I think the idea that productivity can be measured and exists in human relationships is an illusion.
And honestly, I think pushing everything toward productivity actually makes things worse.
Of course, you might think differently. Maybe discovering better metrics, better values, and better modeling could change things. I think that's possible. But I'm not sure if it's actually achievable.
Productivity is important, even if the immaterial aspects that contribute to it can’t be precisely measured.
Productivity is the reason that only 2% the population works in agriculture and the only way we can afford to maintain a space station.
Of course there are MBA grifters who are pumping out articles about how you can measure and optimize human relationships and of course, most of these are bunk. But that doesn’t mean that productivity doesn’t exist or isn’t useful or isn’t worth thinking about how to optimize.
That's why so many posts on HN always include the same pattern, 'productivity.' I clicked thinking it would be about the social physics of conversation, like how to engage people socially or avoid hurting them, but instead it drifts into the concept of 'productivity.'
But no matter how much I think about it, I don't believe productivity is a solid, tangible thing, the way people talk about it as if it were