I follow Jason Calacanis on Twitter and was inspired for this blog post by his (one of many) interesting entry titled ‘The 120% Solution.’   (http://calacanis.com/2008/12/04/the-120-solution/)  I think he makes some fantastic points, but as I started thinking about it I disagree with one of his points.  Here goes:

 

I agree that we need to cut the waste and start new companies (doing my part J), but I don’t agree that a 6 day work week is the answer.  I think it’s about productivity, making the right decisions, and in the spirit of being Lean, eliminating 20% of things that are not as important as the other 80%. 

 

How many productive hours does the average American worker experience in a week?  10, 15 maybe?  I’m sure there are people in the 30-35 hour range, but I think that is more the exception that the rule.  Think of this, how many interruptions did you have this week in your office environment?  How much time did that take out of your week?  One more hour of productivity to 30% of our population would result in a huge benefit to our economy.

 

In the internet connected and device world which we live today couldn’t we get the productivity increase from a larger number of people knowing how to use tools to save time?  I’m a software guy so I don’t think of hammers and pulleys (although recognize their importance), but imagine if people know a little more about spreadsheets, databases, email, and online services.  Imagine if the user interfaces got more intuitive and these tools became more accessible.  The good news is that we’re making this happen. 

 

One of the simplest tools on the internet today is a search engine.  You type in words and the result is a bunch of pages.  Most people who are reading this know how to use a search engine, but I bet the number of people in America that still don’t know how to use a search engine to answer a specific question (i.e. How do I register my vehicle in the state of Washington?) is staggering.  This might be a result of users never considering that they can use it for this task.

 

Becoming more productive in an area is not about working harder, it’s about asking the right question and caring to find the right answer.  I help and work in software teams for a living, so applying this to the software teams, if you’re not going to hit your deadline you shouldn’t say, “the Standish Group says that some 60% of projects don’t meet their delivery date” and therefore it’s fine to be part of that 60%.  If you care, which I hope you do as your job is on the line, you should be asking questions such as: Why did we miss the date?  Was it a lack of quality at a specific point or area in the project that caused us not to be ready?  Was it the fact that the scope increased in the middle of the project?  Was it that we lost code during the construction?  Was it that we couldn’t integrate a component into the larger project?  Did we not define the project well enough and not change quick enough when we realized that we were solving the wrong problem?  Yes, it’s hard to know what question to ask to improve, but the first step is caring.  Whatever the problem was/is, the next question should be: How do we fix it?  Continuous Improvement is much about asking that question over and over and following through.