The processor is the beating heart of your computer. The higher the clock speed, the faster the processor is and the more tasks your computer can perform within a certain time.
What about your company? I speak to many entrepreneurs and then see large differences in clock speed. Take a few almost identical companies: the same type of service, the same turnover, the same number of employees. Yet one company knows how to have more impact in a year and get more business done than another. The differences are sometimes huge and that is reflected in the profitability and the pace of growth of the company.
Intriguing! Where is the crux?
Of course, one company is just doing things smarter than another. And of course one company is further in digitization than another or has a stronger position in the market. But apart from that, major differences remain visible.
People are the beating heart of your business and are making the difference! Is there such a thing as the clock speed of individuals and teams? Certainly in knowledge-intensive companies, one knows how to perform amazingly more work than the other. Without sacrificing quality. And that raises many questions. Can you measure this? Do you want to measure this? What makes this difference? Is it developable?
There is certainly something to measure and develop; there are many bookcases full written about personal effectiveness and productivity. What I want to emphasize now is the importance of steering on output.
Make fair agreements about the expected result before starting work. Then leave the employee and the team free to work as much as possible. And afterwards take (short cycle) the time to discuss the result achieved. There is usually appreciation if the goals have been achieved or if the performance has even been better than expected. But, and it often goes wrong here, also objectively confront if the expected goal has not been achieved.
In an output-driven organization, the employee or team has been given every opportunity to choose how the goal will be achieved. Then it has also become personal responsibility. Apologies about all sorts of factors that made it impossible to achieve the goals, are not OK. And if a manager goes along with this, the learning capacity of the employee is limited and it is disastrous for the spirit in the organization.
Work together on a culture with a fair and open process of goal setting, independent implementation, evaluation, giving feedback and learning what the optimal role is for each team member. This forms the basis for an optimally motivated team. Now, the clock speed of individuals and teams can gradually increase.