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By: Robert F. Abbott When Phil hires a new helper for one of his construction projects, he first watches to see whether or not the newcomer has the right attitudes and habits to keep him as an employee. And, if the newcomer meets expectations,' Phil introduces him to his philosophy about work by telling him the woodcutters story. Two woodcutters who are working together for the first time, set off in the morning to cut down trees. One woodcutter works very hard, and aside from a couple of breaks, works steadily all day. The other woodcutter, though, seems to take many more breaks, at least one every hour. So the first woodcutter expects he'll have cut down many more trees by the end of the day. But, when they quit for the day, the first woodcutter finds, to his surprise, that the second woodcutter has done more, despite taking all those breaks. And, in his frustration, the first woodcutter wonders out loud how the second woodcutter did it. The second woodcutter couldn't help but hear the first woodcutter's question, and replies, 'Yes, I take many more breaks, but every time I take one, I sharpen my axe.' Phil uses this story of the woodcutters to explain his ideas about productivity, and he doesn't relate it to the productivity which economists refer to in their statistics. Phil thinks of productivity in a very immediate way: how many nails you can drive in one hour, for example. The economists are talking about the same thing, only they're talking about it as the sum of many millions of businesses and organizations, so they're talking about productivity in an abstract way. Whatever the case, productivity simply refers to the amount of value you can get from labor, land, or capital (invested money). As we'll see in the next section, Phil's income goes up when he (and his helper’s) productivity goes up. Increasing productivity across a whole nation is also good news. It means everyone in society becomes more prosperous, that everyone (or almost everyone) will have more money to spend or save. Increased productivity can also mean lower prices. For example, if carpenters and home building companies increase their productivity, then house prices will go down. Generally speaking, though, consumers, owners of businesses, and workers in those businesses all share productivity gains. And what about people without job? Well they often gain, too, because when businesses owners and workers make more, they pay more in taxes. In turn, that makes more money available to governments for social programs. Having heard all that, you may be skeptical, thinking your prosperity hasn't gone up much, if at all. But you'd be wrong. Productivity has gone up, and gone up a lot over the past two hundred years, and especially over the past 50 years. It may be invisible to most of us, but productivity is one of the silver bullets that have given us our prosperity and so many of our choices.
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More Articles:1. Giving Effective Feedback By Barb McEwen If there is one area that gives both managers and employees difficulty it is the need to give and accept effective feedback. It is one of the most crucial elements in assisting employees to improve their performance. It establishes a connection between what employees are doing and how their actions are perceived by others. Although receiving feedback is often under appreciated, those on the receiving end must occasionally be reminded that no feedback could be much worse.Most managers consider … 2. The 20/60/20 Rule Of Leadership. Don't Go Solving The Wrong Problems By Brent Filson Several decades ago, a passenger jet approached a Florida airport with the pilot and co-pilot struggling to fix what they thought was a malfunctioning landing gear. The landing-gear light was on, signaling that the gear was deployed; but both men did not hear it actually deploy.As the men sought to understand whether they had a defective landing-gear light or a defective landing gear -- the co-pilot actually taking up a hatch and getting down into the wheel well -- the aircraft kept losing al… 3. Dynamic Management By G Ram Kumar Traditional management techniques are based on the model 'Plan->Execute->Control'. This approach has certain difficulties in the implementation of all the three stages. The question of reliability of basic facts and forecasts for needed planning, effect of external influences on its execution and influence of time factor in control measures are problems faced by many. These problems emanate from the assumption that business criteria are static. I real life situations everything in business is … 4. ISO 9001, What Next? By John Oakland The overriding goal of ISO-14000. (History 1995)As ISO-9000 becomes a way of life for the global business community, ISO-14000 is almost ready to debut with its own set of standards for voluntary environmental compliance.Much has been heard recently about the antiregulation sentiment sweeping across the country. Lawmakers in Washington have responded with talk of "regulatory reform" and programs aimed at "re-inventing government."One of the targets of this regulatory backlash has been the ever… |
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