As far as management guru Stephen R. Covey is concerned, workers are far less productive than they could be–partly because they don’t have the proper skills, but mostly because their companies’ management is stuck in the wrong era.
“We’re using the industrial-age model in a knowledge-age world,” Covey said in a speech in South San Francisco, part of a Lessons in Leadership program presented by San Francisco State University. “The main asset of the industrial age was equipment. The main asset of this age is people.”
“Knowledge workers are more precious than customers,” said Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and co-chairman of FranklinCovey, the world’s largest management and leadership development organization. “One knowledge worker can add a million customers.”
But employees are stifled by today’s workplaces, Covey said. When FranklinCovey asked clients, “How many believe that the vast majority of the people in your organization possess far more creativity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, intelligence and talent than their jobs require or even allow?” more than 95 percent raised their hands.
Despite this, Covey said, most workplace improvement programs are for fine-tuning rather than major changes, so workers produce only marginally more.
“People focus on skills, knowledge, positions. That’s so superficial,” he said. “If you want to make minor improvements, work on behavior and attitudes. If you want to make quantum improvements, work on paradigms. A paradigm is like a mental model or a map.”
What you’ve got to do is to let people break out of their rigid organizations, Covey said: “The fastest way to change a person’s paradigm is to change their role.”
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