How To Improve Productivity

Seven Skills of a Highly Productive Workforce

by Doug Howardell

Customers in the global economy are more demanding than ever before. They can be;
there is more competition than ever before. Customers take it for granted that you will deliver a
low cost and high quality product or service. Now on top of that, they demand it faster and
customized to their individual needs. To be a survivor in the marketplace today you must
produce world class quality products and services,
designed to meet the specific customer’s needs,
deliver them quickly anywhere in the world and at
a competitive price.
The company that wants to be successful in
this new environment will have to create a faster,
smarter, better organization. A faster, smarter,
better organization requires three things. Flexible
and adaptable processes that can be reconfigured
quickly as demands change, up to the minute
technology that allows instant communication with
customers and suppliers and most importantly, a
highly productive workforce. Productivity,
according to the ACA group, comes from doing the
right thing and doing it right. The ACA Group,
www.theacagroup.com, is an alliance of highly trained and experienced consultants and
instructors providing Consulting Services, Training & Education to a variety of manufacturing
and service organizations, in both the public and private sectors ranging from five million
dollars in annual sales to Fortune 500 companies. To be highly productive a workforce has to
have specific skills. We have identified seven skills required by the highly productive workforce.
Because a company is only as good as its people, these skills are the prerequisites for survival in
the new global economy. Some of these skills are not new in themselves, but they do take on
much greater importance for the workforce of an world class competitor. We have paid lip
service in the past to things like customer responsiveness and teaming. It is time to take them
seriously. These skills should be viewed as a set. Everyone in the organization requires them
all. A lack of any of these skills reduces the productivity of the entire organization.

Skill 1 - Customer Consciousness

People need to know how to identify their customers, internal or external, and to identify
their customer’s needs. They need to know how to meet those needs and measure themselves
from the customer’s perspective.
This skill set is too often taken for granted. “Of course we know who our customer is.”
But does everyone, at all levels of the organization know? A successful competitor in the global
economy will have to be closer to its customers than ever before. The demands of Mass
customization and quick response manufacturing make staying close to your customer even
more important. What the customer wanted yesterday might not be what they want today. You
need to know what they want as soon as it changes.
The idea of internal customers needs to be re-enforced through out the organization. If
your job is not direct interface with the customer then maybe you support someone whose job is.

Copyright 1999 © Douglas Howardell All rights reserved

 To drive customer responsiveness through the entire enterprise, we must treat whoever receives
the output of our process as our customer.
The highly productive workforce must be trained to continually ask the critical customer
questions. “Who is MY customer?” “What are their needs or concerns?” “Am I meeting these
needs?” “How do I know if I am meeting their needs?” The workforce must be trained to keep
in touch with their customers, identify barriers to customer satisfaction and eliminate them.

Skill 2 – Strategically Aligned

Management needs to know how to define the culture and the policies of the winning
organization. Companies have vision and mission statements defining what they want to be.
Typically those documents sit on a shelf or on a plaque on the wall, and everyone does what
they’ve always done. Management must know how to turn those statements into coordinated
action. The whole organization must be actively working on achieving those results. The
workforce makes tactical operational decisions every minute of every day. These decisions must
be aligned with the overall goals of the enterprise.
In today’s rapidly changing world, the workforce has to respond quickly to new
situations. They won’t have time to ask for approval. They must know what is expected and
acceptable. If the entire enterprise is not pulling in the same direction then the goals of the
organization will not be achieved.
The organization must know how to turn broad policy statements into specific, concrete
actions. Measurement systems must be designed to assure these plans are executed. Constant
feedback is required to make mid-course corrections.

Skill 3 – Environmentally Adaptive

Thriving in a changing environment is one of the most critical new skills for people
today. Change, technological, and social, is the hallmark of the late 20th century. The pace of
change will only accelerate in the next century. How we react to change today is, in large part, a
measure of how we will fare tomorrow. Management needs to know
how to overcome people’s resistance to change and how to re-channel
the workforce’s anxiety into productive creativity. People need to
know how to use the changing environment to their advantage.
Embrace Members of an highly productive workforce need to know how to
recognize their reaction to change and channel that reaction into
contribution. This is not “change management” of which much has
been written, but skills for individuals to thrive in a changing world.
When customer demands are constantly shifting, products and
processes must change to support each new customer order. The
workforce must be able to assimilate these changes and execute faster
than ever before. Changing processes also means that our roles and
responsibilities will change with greater frequency. We may have one
job today and be expected to do several different jobs tomorrow. The
Resist highly productive workforce must be able to respond to these sudden
and frequent changes in their work lives.
Surrender There is a continuum of reaction to change from resistance to
positive acceptance of the change. We can identify where we or someone else is on that
continuum by observing behavior in a changing situation. There are tools that can be used to
help people progress through these stages. Thriving in a changing environment begins by
identifying where a person is on the change acceptance continuum. Then we can select and apply
the corresponding tool to move them further along the acceptance continuum.

Copyright 1999 © Douglas Howardell All rights reserved

Skill 4 – Intrinsically Directed
A lean and productive organization can’t afford to have people sitting around waiting to
be told what to do and how to do it. People need to know how to maximize their productivity,
how to manage their time and how to stay organized. The highly productive workforce must
know how to set their own goals. They must have the skills to put plans in place to achieve
those goals. They need to be trained on basic plan management techniques. Then they need to
know how to execute those plans by prioritizing their daily activities and working on the critical
few instead of the trivial many. This is an old skill set that takes on much greater importance
given the independence of work today.
Combined with this, people need to understand the new employment realities. In the
new reality, people cannot count on working for the same company for most of their career.
They can’t rely on climbing the ladder with the help of some mentor. In our new world, we will
change companies, change jobs, even change careers several times during our work life. It will
be easy to get lost and to drift through such a world. The workforce must learn how to define a
course they want to follow and stay on it even as the winds are constantly shifting.
They must be much more proactive in their career management. The company won’t do
it for them anymore, if it ever did. People need to know how to set goals for themselves,
develop plans to achieve those goals and measure progress against their plan.

Skill 5 – Innovative Intelligence

As an enterprise empowers its workforce to solve issues as they arise, to invent new
processes and even new products as needs are identified, it will rely on the creativity of its entire
workforce as never before. It can no longer be the job of just the engineers or staff experts
to improve product and process. Improvement becomes the job of
every employee and the highly productive workforce will have to
be trained to be able to respond.
Management needs to know how to foster and respond to
creativity. People need to know how to analyze problems, apply
critical thinking processes and analysis techniques. They need to
understand the systems engineering approach to the development of
solutions so their changes fit into the overall company processes. People
need to know how to think in new ways, how to develop creative responses
to new demands and how to be productively creative to stay ahead of the
competition.
The first part of developing creative solutions is to understand the
issues. The workforce needs to be well versed in the classic analysis tools like
praeto charts, fishbone diagrams, and control charts. They also need to be
experienced in group brainstorming, and Delphi estimating. Once the issue is
understood at the level of facts and data then we can teach people to invent creative
solutions. We must teach people about barriers to creative thinking, how to overcome
them and the four roles of the creative thinker: Explorer, Artist, Judge and Warrior. We can train
people understand different thinking styles and when to apply a particular style.

Copyright 1999 © Douglas Howardell All rights reserved

Skill 6 - Process Orientation
One of the biggest shifts required of a global competitor is the shift from functional or
departmental thinking to process thinking. Functional thinking causes people to think about their
job or their department. When judging the merit of a new way of doing something, they think
about the impact on themselves. This causes
sub-optimization and territorial infighting.
Process thinking helps people understand how
potential improvements affect the enterprise as a
whole. Management and the workforce need to
know the basics of process improvement:
process thinking, process understanding, process
mapping, process measurement and process
redesign.
We have to ensure that everyone, from
top to bottom, understands what we mean by a
process - the conversion of input to output by applying value. The highly productive workforce
must be intimately familiar with process mapping. A picture is still worth ... The highly
productive workforce must understand various types of process mapping techniques and when to
apply which. Measurement is the key to any improvement. Measure the wrong thing or
measure in an imprecise way and you may work at improving the wrong area. The highly
productive workforce must be trained on how to design measurements of critical steps in their
processes.

Skill 7 – Collaborative Outlook

An enterprise has to react fast as customer demands are identified. There is no longer
time to wait to run everything up the management chain or to get new ideas and strategies
approved by a large bureaucracy. We have to move now, or the opportunity may be lost.
Empowered teams who know their processes and how they relate to the overall operation allow a
company to be much more responsive.
Self directed work teams are important components of any improvement strategy.
Management in a successful competitor needs to know how to establish, charter, nurture, reward
and manage work teams. People need to learn what is expected of them in a teaming
environment, how to be team player, the roles and responsibilities of team members and the
basic functioning of teams.
Waving a magic wand and saying you are now a team does not create a team-centered
workforce. Management must determine such things as why teams, what are the teams, are they
cross functional or departmental based. Management must decide what authority the teams
have. How will the teams be measured and rewarded? What about individual performers within
the teams, how will they be recognized? Lastly management must decide what happens to
management in a team-based organization. What authority does management retain for itself?
After management has defined the expectations and limits on the teams, the workforce
will have to be taught things like: stages of team development - storming, forming, norming,
performing; team roles - team leader, scribe, and process observer. Often overlooked, consensus
decision making is a new and critical skill that teams will have to be taught.

Copyright 1999 © Douglas Howardell All rights reserved

 It’s a new world. We have to change to keep up. Companies who want to thrive have to align
themselves around a new set of strategies designed to help them be competitive on a global
scale. All the goals of any enterprise can only be achieved through the efforts of its workforce.
To achieve these goals, the workforce must possess the skills to respond to constant change,
constant demand for more, and constant quickening of the pace. These are skills that the world
class enterprise must assure their workforce possesses. Acquisition of these skills will not
happen by itself. Management should put a plan in place. Courses need to be designed or
procured. Resources and time need to be allocated. Creating a Highly productive workforce
requires management to act. Start right away. Our customers are revolting and our competition
is already acting to take advantage of the situation.

7
The Seven Skills required by the highly productive
workforce
1. Customer Consciousness
2. Strategically Aligned
3. Environmentally Adaptive
4. Intrinsically Directed
5. Innovative Intelligence
6. Process Orientation
7. Collaborative Outlook

Copyright 1999 © Douglas Howardell All rights reserved

 About the author
Douglas K. Howardell, CPIM
2120 Highland Oaks Drive
Arcadia, CA 91006
800.639.7661
E-mail: DHowardell@aol.com

Doug Howardell is president of Symbiotic Solutions, a small

consulting company that specializes in helping clients improve their
operations by focusing on people and processes. During the past
twenty years he has helped many clients optimize their business
processes and helped their people reach their highest potential. He
has designed new processes and tools, selected and implemented
new business systems, and managed a large variety of improvement
projects. He has extensive experience and expertise in all aspects of
materials management in manufacturing and distribution companies.

While employed in industry, Mr. Howardell held a variety of

positions, starting out as an inventory clerk and eventually working
his way up to Director of Materials. During this time, he experienced first hand the issues and
challenges that materials management personnel face.

In addition to his expertise in materials management and project management, Doug’s extensive
experience with education and training includes teaching collage courses in the California State
University program, in both traditional classroom settings and in distance learning programs. He
has developed and delivered numerous custom training programs on a wide variety of topics.
He has taught the APICS body of knowledge to hundreds of people both in in-house company
settings and in a university environment. Doug has taken the APICS body of knowledge and
trained companies to apply that knowledge in their daily tasks. He has repeatedly demonstrated
his ability to educate people in the theory and train them in the application.

Doug is the past president of the Los Angeles chapter of APICS and is currently a member of the
Complex Industries SIG steering committee. He is one of the principal authors and presenters of
the CI SIG’s very successful workshop, “Selecting and Implementing ERP Systems, A Common
Sense Approach.” He is a frequent speaker at APICS conferences and meetings. His current
presentation topics include, “Seven Skills of A Highly productive workforce,” and “Overcoming
People’s Fear of Change.”

Academically, Mr. Howardell holds a BA in History from California State University. He is

Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) by APICS.

Copyright 1999 © Douglas Howardell All rights reserved