The Productivity Problem In Corporate Business Today

You see it all the time...

Businesses and leaders are looking for ways to become more productive.

But here is the thing...

Just about everything that leaders are doing today...

Make productivity worse.

They add employees...

Productivity becomes worse.

They take away employees...

Productivity becomes worse.

They initiate a new culture initiative....

Productivity becomes worse.

They do team building exercises...

Productivity becomes worse.

They make employees compete against each other...

Productivity becomes worse.

They add new technology, like AI...

Productivity becomes worse.

They develop new systems...

Productivity becomes worse.

The result?

Most businesses and leaders end up feeling trapped...

Because everything they do seems to make productivity worse.

This is not just a theory...

This is the lived reality of many leaders.

But why?

How is it that even opposing strategies seem not to work?

The answer is that all of these solutions...

End up going against psychophysiology in one way or another.

The real problem is twofold.

The first issue is that most leaders and businesses fail to understand productivity.

The second issue is the current state of the workforce.

Let's start with what productivity is.

Most leaders and businesses approach the idea of productivity from a machine line perspective.

What do I mean?

If you have a machine line that produces 100 items an hour over 10 hours...

For a total of 1,000 items...

But you want to double the items...

What do you do?

Well, most machines have an hourly capacity, which they are usually running at from the start...

So if you want to double the amount of items...

Then you double the time.

100 items an hour over 20 hours...

You get 2,000 items...

You've doubled your productivity for the day.

Except...

This both fails to understand productivity at that level...

While also not understanding how productivity works in biological systems...

And if you haven't guessed it yet, humans fall into biological systems.

So, what is productivity really?

It is the amount of results attained over a similar period of time.

From this, we can see that the "similar period of time" is already wrong in the above scenario.

The productivity does not really change.

The machine's productivity is really 100 items per hour.

The output only changed because the total time the machine ran changed...

But it is exactly the same level of productivity the entire time.

We see leaders try to claim higher productivity both by "extending time" as well as "adding more machines"...

Or sorry, I mean humans, as so many leaders seem to forget.

So really...

There is not really an increase in productivity...

There is just an increase in the total number of individuals or hours.

And this is where the biological systems become a problem...

Specifically, in today's business environment...

With burnout.

Over 80% of the workforce is currently in burnout...

And the trend is expected to get worse...

Because leaders are treating employees as if they were machines in the above example...

Instead of leaning into human psychophysiology to get true productivity.

See...

When a biological system is pushed beyond its current limits...

The productivity will decrease.

Think of it like a person walking through the desert without food or water.

At first, they might be fine...

But eventually their pace will slow down...

They will begin to have hallucinations and likely end up going in circles...

And eventually, they cannot go on.

The more we push a biological system, the faster it decays.

When we are in burnout...

Our productivity potential is estimated to drop to 5% or lower...

But the data on that is likely estimating it high...

And yes...

Productivity can, and regularly does, become negative.

So, if a person is working optimally (which is rare) and starts out doing 100 units per hour over 8 hours a day...

But you begin to push them to do 12 or more hours a day...

You will begin to see that they move into burnout...

And instead of getting 1200 units per day...

It will be closer to 60 units per day.

This will not happen immediately, of course.

The first week you might get 1,000 units...

Then 1,100 units...

Perhaps it does reach up to 1,200 units...

But within the next few weeks, you will begin to see the numbers drop again...

And then you will begin to see mistakes happen...

Then things will continue to get worse.

This is usually the point where leaders will then believe that they need to add more people to reduce their overtime...

As well as build out their team because it seems they need the help...

Except the damage is done within the biological system...

And adding people at the point of burnout creates a new problem...

Group Burnout.

Via physiological mechanisms, humans have the ability to "spread" dis-stress via neurocardiology...

Resulting in a work environment that is typically described as...

Toxic.

Pressure is put on leaders to get results...

Teams are struggling, and they begin to resent their leaders...

Errors happen, which cause tensions...

Emotional intelligence drops in burnout, leading to things like yelling and misunderstanding...

All causing the culture to become more toxic.

This is the point where most leaders see the culture problem and attempt to "change" the culture.

The problem?

Everyone is still in burnout...

When we are at our absolute worst as humans...

And culture only changes when "everyone's" behavior changes.

But in burnout...

We struggle to change our behavior...

And revert to whatever we have done in the past...

Which is what created the toxic workplace in the first place.

But...

Because we created an "initiative" to change the culture...

And it completely failed...

Everyone becomes "more" resentful of each other...

Making the group dynamics worse.

This is when leaders begin to think about "cutting" the "problem employees"...

Except...

Often the leaders are as guilty, or more guilty, of being the problem...

And...

The usual expectation of cutting people is that everyone else has to "pick up the slack"...

Except they cannot physically do that...

Because they are already in burnout.

Do you see the problem here?

From here, we see the team-building exercises to try to "help" the team work together better...

But burnout is still a problem.

This usually leads to a number of employees being resentful for being "forced" to "play nice" with the members of their team they do not want to be around...

And...

The reality is that in burnout, it is nearly impossible for us to learn new skills...

Which is what team-building exercises are based on.

So the techniques are "taught"...

But are not "learned"...

And therefore fail to be implemented in reality...

Because in burnout, we always revert to what we have done in the past.

But what happens when you then have people compete against each other?

Well, you create disunity within your organization...

And usually, further resentment.

Most employees are also not aware of human psychophysiological dynamics...

So they will "push" past their limits to "get ahead"...

And put themselves either into burnout, especially new team members trying to "prove" themselves...

Or will worsen the burnout they already had, often out of "fear" that if they are not competitive enough, they will be the next on the chopping block.

In either case, the result is the same...

The biological system breaks down further.

This is the place in many organizations where you will begin to see silos form, and systems begin to break down from multiple unknown directions...

Because everyone is "out for themselves", and looking to "appear" better at "any" cost...

Meaning the corners are often cut...

Bad deals are made...

Confusion occurs...

"Solutions" are created that negatively impact other departments...

And now leaders are not sure what to do because everything is in chaos...

Not to mention the pressure that they still are experiencing to get results.

Now we get to the point where leaders start to have a new belief...

If all the "human" based approaches are failing...

Perhaps the problem is technology or systems.

Ah...

These only create new problems though...

Because of burnout.

All change causes stress...

And the bigger the change, the worse the stress.

But in burnout, we are already overwhelmed by stressors...

Meaning...

The large changes only make burnout worse.

We initiate new systems and technology...

With the promise of a new golden age...

Less stress...

Higher productivity...

But the result is the opposite.

Then, perhaps the greatest irony of it all...

leaders begin to demand that people take their vacation...

Because it is clear that people need a break at this point...

They take a vacation...

Feel refreshed...

Come back to work...

And within a week feel like they are at the exact same place they were before they took their vacation.

Why?

We fail to understand that burnout is an "advanced" psychophysiological problem.

You will not recover from burnout in a week...

Many people at this point have gotten so far into extreme levels of burnout that even a few months of vacation would not solve the problem...

And...

You still have the problem of the toxic environment when you get back from vacation...

Where Group Burnout still persists...

And will drag you back into burnout quickly.

This is the result of failing to understand what productivity actually means in human biological systems.

So the question becomes...

What does productivity actually look like?

In the absolute simplest of psychophysiological terms...

Group Flow.

Looking solely at human productivity...

Group Flow and Group Burnout are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Flow states are where people are at their absolute best.

Higher IQ and EQ.

Faster learning.

Better problem-solving.

Greater results in less time.

That is "true" productivity.

Same person...

Same amount of time...

Better results.

That is what leaders really need...

But you only attain that by understanding the human psychophysiology at play.

You need to stop treating businesses as machines...

And start to look at them as biological systems.

In my work, I call this Regenerative Legacy Design in businesses...

And the results have improved culture...

Gotten better results and productivity...

And led to new leaders rising and being immediately accepted.

The solutions to our business problems lie in understanding our "human" potential.

---

Are You Ready to Go Beyond Leadership?

Tired of Broken Algorithms and AI Slop?

Excited to Dive Deeper into Psychophysiological Mastery?

Want to Change The World?

The Seeking Sageship Newsletter is for You!

Click Here to Subscribe for Free!