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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. Climb out of the Box - How to Hold Effective Meetings By Steve Kaye Out of the box thinking is a popular fad today. And yet, in order to leave a box, you have to realize that you are in one.For example, the Indians who lived in the Grand Canyon believed the entire world was like the canyon. And so they didn’t try to find Kansas. This can be okay, if you’re in a beautiful place like the Grand Canyon.It can be a rut, however, if you’re stuck in bad meetings.For example, many leaders truly believe that it is normal to spend hours in a meeting engaged in point… 2. Setting Performance Standards for your Employees The success of your business is directly related to the commitment and productivity of the people who work in your business. And yet it is generally recognized that 60% of employees, or more, are underutilized in their roles at work. So what are the factors that contribute to low performance standards and expectations? Communication, or mis-communciation, is one of the major sources of low productivity. The messages that move between the owner, employees, managers and even customers are not unde… 3. Employee Performance - If You Want the Best, Get Personal! By Martin Haworth This is a story about a man and three dogs.I walk a lot - usually for about half to three-quarters of an hour most mornings. I see a guy with two dogs quite a lot. We chat a little occasionally.Of the two dogs (I know I said three, so hold on a bit), one is a light brown lurcher and is quite friendly and the other is a beautiful black labrador. He is 'nippy' as my co-walker tells me, so I have been a bit careful of him, but I always try to stroke him too. Whilst I have always been cautious o… 4. Creativity and Innovation Management: Specialisation or Generalisation? By Kal Bishop Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development … |
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