{"id":3664,"date":"2014-08-17T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T09:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/?p=3664"},"modified":"2014-08-29T09:33:54","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T08:33:54","slug":"hard-work-only-a-small-part-of-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/2014\/08\/17\/hard-work-only-a-small-part-of-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard work: only a small part of productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><img loading=\"lazy\" id=\"irc_mi\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-f862a52cyZk\/Te9FjDIk_qI\/AAAAAAAAADM\/2SZlrlVw5To\/s1600\/Hard-Work-Ant.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"273\" height=\"211\" \/>&#8220;Hard work is only a small part of productivity&#8221; says Richard Farson in his short book &#8216;Management of the Absurd&#8217;. But this can&#8217;t be true can it? What about work ethic, effort and all those other good things? Farson&#8217;s argument is that we should\u00a0 distinguish between what it is that makes people work hard and what accounts for productivity. Our work organisations. Now, not wanting to just re-regurgitate Farson&#8217;s already well considered arguments, it is worth adding a fresh angle to emphasise what he has observed.<\/p>\n<p>Deming has very strong views on this: &#8220;Hard work and best efforts will not by themselves dig us out of the pit&#8221; &#8211; working hard may get you no-where fast (and you will be none the wiser until it is too late).<\/p>\n<p>Work has to be <a title=\"Tell me \u2013 what\u2019s your purpose?\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/2013\/05\/02\/tell-me-whats-your-purpose\/\">purposeful and that purpose needs to be relevant<\/a>. To enable this we must be able to ask the right questions, to seek the right knowledge to inform us in what we do, how and why it matters.<\/p>\n<p>Further Reading:<\/p>\n<p>Deming W.E. (1993) The New Economics, MIT CAES, Cambridge MA.<\/p>\n<p>Farson R. (1996) Management of the Absurd. New York: Simon &amp; Shuster<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Hard work is only a small part of productivity&#8221; says Richard Farson in his short book &#8216;Management of the Absurd&#8217;. But this can&#8217;t be true can it? What about work ethic, effort and all those other good things? Farson&#8217;s argument is that we should\u00a0 distinguish between what it is that makes people work hard and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/2014\/08\/17\/hard-work-only-a-small-part-of-productivity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hard work: only a small part of productivity<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2246,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119315],"tags":[25079,25033,25029],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4196,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions\/4196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/change-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}