There are lots of sites and blogs on the web which purport to be about productivity.  Many of these are about what might be termed 'personal productivity' - time management, self-motivation, etc.  This set me thinking. Is there a natural connection between national productivity, organisational productivity and personal productivity? My own view - based solely

I can be as guilty as the next person is hailing specific concepts and practices as being important determinants of higher productivity.  But we should stop searching for the 'secret' - the panacea - and concentrate on the basics. Productivity is about good organisation, good planning, effective design of facilities, systems and processes, effective motivation

A personal 'productivity' tip sometimes referred to as 'Seinfeld's Chain' after Jerry Seinfeld, the US comedian is a useful reminder of the need to 'keep at it'.  The story is that, when he started writing, Seinfeld would mark each day he had spent his planned time actually writing by putting a big red cross through

Employees work - and work hard  - for various reasons. Obviously there are contractual reasons - they take the money and have to 'put in the hours'. But above and beyond what they are contracted to, most employees put in 'discretionary effort' - over and above the minimum, perhaps because they like what they do,

Last week I talked about gamification - and whether it could be used to help improve productivity If you weren't thinking about it then, I hope you are now - Ambient research suggests that game-based learning will grow from $1.5 billion in 2012 to $2.3 billion in 2017.  This is important.  I am regularly int  touch with productivity centres around the globe

We've heard quite a lot about 'gamification' recently - especially in the context of online learning. I read the term many times before I sought to understand it ... so I thought some of you might be in the same boat and would appreciate an executive summary'. If I'm right (after several minutes of research),

Recently a colleague was bemoaning the fact that he had taken a bad decision.  When I questioned him about the decision, and about the outcomes, I formed the view that he had taken a 'correct' (or sensible) decision given the information he had available at the time. As an example, consider the decision to make

For about 10 years now wage increases in Germany have not kept up with the development of productivity, by a long stretch" said European Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor in an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag recently  This, of course, makes Germany highly competitive compared to other European states. Is this a problem? Is this unfair?

When we make changes to (try to) improve productivity, we subsequently measure results and assess impact.  (Or we should if we want to evaluate our own performance and impact.) However, in many complex situations, we cannot be clear that what we have done has resulted in the changes we observe.  What would have happened if

In my recent discussions with PAPA (the Pan African Productivity Association), the topic of the Ebola virus came up.  Just as Africa seems to have recovered from the great HIV/Aids crisis (having largely got the 'epidemic' under control), the continent is hit by another great health problem - likely to have severe implications for those