Being effective and being productive

As I last wrote, being effective means being potent – successfully achieving desired outcome a high proportion of the time, or doing something particularly and consistently well. Being productive is about creating abundance – being effective often. If you are effective often enough, you make a difference. You are valuable.

One way to appreciate what being productive means is to understand how economists view it.

To economists it is about how much output (say, cobs of corn picked) can be delivered as a result of a stated input (say, one laborer). The more cobs of corn that can be picked in a given amount of time by one worker, the more productive that worker is. A highly productive worker, it runs out, can pick about 50-60 cobs of corn a minute – that’s about a bushel a minute, or 60 bushels and hours. If more than one worker can pick the same number of cobs of corn in the same period of time, then the more productive the group of workers is. If a farm is fortunate enough to employ 75 highly productive corn pickers, then the group can harvest 4500 bushels in an hour. As economist know, however, the more laborers are added the greater the likelihood that they bang into each other, and that their efforts are harder to manage. Economists call this diminishing returns. It’s a fact of life that economists know, but that most business people don’t take into account.

Add some machinery – say, $350,000 for a corn combine (with GPS and stereo radio no less) and driven by one laborer that can harvest the same 4500 bushels of corn an hour. If the hourly cost of operating the corn combine, with depreciation and cost of capital factored in, of course, and the cost of the operator added together is less than the cost of paying 75 workers then the farm can be even more productive. You need not do the math. There’s a reason you see all those green and yellow John Deere corn combines in fields rather than 75 workers going flat out. It is a far more productive option.

Now, unless you are in the corn harvesting business or engaged in some activity that easily measures outputs you know that the foregoing example bears no relationship to the notion of productivity in what you may do for a living – especially if you work in a white collar job, are in the performing arts, or a writer, a musician, a poet, or are perhaps a teacher or a minister. Determining if you are productive within an organization, let alone measuring it, is a very complex undertaking. Yet, there are some simple ways to look at individual productivity.

• A baseball player who has a .400 batting average is effective. If he makes 100 plate appearances in a season then he can be expected, on average, to hit safely 40 times a year. A player with a .350 batting average who can make 200 plate appearances a season (perhaps he is not injury prone) is more productive to the team over the course of a season for he can be expected to hit safely 70 times a year.
• Similarly, if the .400 hitter is an average fielder (in terms of number of outs, assists, opponent batting average while on field, etc.) and the .350 hitter has a better fielding average …. well, you have already figured out who gets paid more.
• The Spaniard, Pablo Picasso, brought works of great art to the world – paintings, drawings, sculptures and even rugs. If Picasso, who lived to 91, had produced a few thousand artworks, as I estimated he had, his fame would have been assured. As it turns out, Picasso produced an estimated 50,000 works of art – about 700 a year during his working life. Vincent Van Gogh, who committed suicide at 37, produced a mere 2,100 artworks. The works of both artists command a small fortune, with collectors paying about the same amount for a top work by each. At about 25 times the output, which artist do you think was the more productive?
• The Rolling Stones, the youngest of whom is 66, still do concerts. They have done over 2100 concerts. All sell-out concerts. A very good seat will cost you $600. In terms of money earned by appearance, the Rolling Stones are highly productive.

If you do something noteworthy and sought after particularly well you get attention. You may be valuable, or you may be a one-trick pony.

If you can do it often enough you can earn a good living. You are valuable.

If you do it well and more frequently than most anyone else you can name your price. You are a rock star.