One operational issue I repeatedly see organizations mistake for a productivity problem is the belief that the team simply needs to be more productive.
Maybe they do.
But before setting a target, the better question is how productivity is being measured today.
In many organizations, the answer is surprisingly unclear. One person closes 50 tickets. Another closes 20. On paper, the first person appears more productive.
But what if the second person discovered that the simple issue was not simple at all? What if they uncovered flawed requirements, corrected a process defect, and prevented hundreds of future issues?
Not all work is created equal. A five-minute fix and a thirty-hour investigation can look identical in a report.
This becomes even more difficult in professional, operational, and knowledge-based work where complexity varies dramatically from task to task.
The other piece that often gets overlooked is quality. When organizations measure speed but not quality, people naturally optimize for speed. Documentation declines. Root causes go unexplored. Problems get pushed downstream. The dashboard improves while the operation quietly gets worse.
What Leaders Often See
- One team member closes more items than another.
- Backlogs appear to improve after speed targets are introduced.
- Reports show more activity but outcomes do not materially improve.
- Teams feel pressure to move work instead of understand work.
What May Be Underneath
- Some work items are materially more complex than others.
- High-volume closure may create rework for another team.
- Root-cause analysis may be undervalued because it takes longer.
- Quality, customer impact, and downstream defects may not be visible.
- People may be rewarded for activity instead of value.
Questions to Ask Before Setting a Productivity Target
- What exactly counts as completed work?
- Are complexity and risk weighted in the measurement?
- Are quality, accuracy, and rework measured alongside speed?
- What customer, member, provider, or employee outcome is connected to the metric?
- Could the metric improve while the operation gets worse?
Practical check
Before asking for more productivity, define what valuable work means.
Productivity matters. But meaningful productivity should be balanced with quality, complexity, customer outcomes, rework, and sustainability.