As a productivity professional, you get into the habit of asking ‘awkward’ questions – why do we do that?; why do you do that in that way?;

But there are other questions that can be just as useful in uncovering the reasons for lost productivity.

Occasionally, you’ve should go to the key points in a process – the bottlenecks , any source of errors, areas of high cost,.  Talk to the people who operate the process and ask therm:

“Tell me what you do every day”

“When you do those things, what gets in your way?”

“What affects the quality of your work?

“What changes would you like to see?”

Then ask supervisors the same questions about their team.

Triangulate ehe answers to see if they agree/correlate.  If not, find out why not. 

Ask the supervisors if the operator responses are realistic.  Are they fair?  Why did you not raise these issues with your line manager?

Now, you have some avenues of enquiry to pursue.

The worst that can happen is that you don’t make significant improvements – but you will almost certainly have delighted your employees with your attempt to understand and deal with their concerns.you will have motivated your supervisors to monitor future operator views and suggestions.  Satisfaction/morale should rise – and trigger  higher productivity.

The best that can happen is that you will find that you have started a virtuous cycle of enquiry and improvement.