Kartar Singh’s buffalos: Measuring Productivity

Kartar Singh is a milkman from Haryana. He has 20 buffaloes. The buffaloes are of a very rare breed and yield a rich bounty of milk. Kartar milks the buffaloes twice a day. He collects the milk and gives it back to the buffaloes as fodder. This process repeats itself every day.

Kartar is working very hard. He spends a lot of his productive hours in milking the buffaloes, collecting the milk and feeding the buffaloes every day.

In terms of output too, you would see that a large quantity of milk is getting collected and consumed every day.

Thus you would see that there is a lot of input and output. Would you be able to say that Kartar is being productive?  How do your measure his productivity?

Quite often we experience the same at our workplace. We spend a lot of time collecting, collating, formatting and storing voluminous data that is never used by anybody. We undertake several projects that take up a lot of time and effort but fail to yield the desired outcome.

As managers, we need to adopt an outcome based work culture that boosts productivity at the workplace. Before engaging our team in any activity we need to assess the impact of that activity. It might be useful to ask yourself a few questions.

·        Why are we doing this?

·        What is the benefit of doing this work?

·        Does this add the required value?

·        Does the value so derived outweigh the cost of efforts being put in?

·        Is there a better or more efficient way of doing this?

·        What if we stop doing this altogether?

Kartar may increase the number of buffaloes from 20 to 50. He might feel superior to the person who has lesser number of buffaloes. In the end, the buffaloes are not likely to survive on milk alone. They might end up being malnourished and meet a premature death.

At our workplace too it is common to see a race between managers who try to give more and more unproductive work to their teams. The team engaged in such work end up like Kartar’s buffaloes.

Kartar needs to find ways to sell his milk. He needs to market his produce effectively and add value to the milk produced by his buffaloes. His marketing skills can help in finding customers who are willing to pay him for the milk.

Similarly, a good manager should be able to sell the work of his team to the customer or the top management. It is only by doing so that he can add value.

Kartar needs to spend a portion of his profits towards providing better fodder to his buffaloes. He needs to provide them with better amenities. It is only by doing so that he can expect the buffaloes to be productive.

Managers need to learn the importance of rewards. Creating a congenial environment is vital to keep the team in a high state of motivation.