Articol de: Eugeniu D. MIHAI, Business Development Manager – Wave Division Group
I have been recently asked to share my perspective on why some people are more productive than others, or why the same person can have various levels of productivity. And most of all, how can a manager maximize the productivity of his /her people, in a sustainable way?
In all honesty, I have found that these are very tough questions to answer. I know for a fact that all managers would love to have our people highly motivated and highly productive day in and day out. Why? Single: because the success of any manager is measure by the success of his/her people! And each of us would love to be top performers each day.
I would like to share with you a story that I personally witnessed 17 years ago, in the Spring of 1998, while working for Procter & Gamble Balkans and which is very relevant to this topic. We had the visit of the (back then) CEO and Chairman of the Board of P&G, John E. Pepper Jr. in our region. You really can’t get a more important visit… so you can imagine that everyone was quite stressed. After the usual business review, John wanted to have a meeting of questions and answers with the organization. Two things impressed me back then and remained engraved in my memory ever since:
1) I felt him as being the most caring and compassionate human being I ever met, because he was listening to each question very carefully, while looking in the eyes of the person who asked the question – in this way showing that he was 100% concentrated on that particular subject; and
2) in one particular question, John was asked how did he manage to work for almost 40 years in the same place, P&G. His answer to this question was simply priceless: “I was lucky that in most of the days I enjoyed coming to work”. This was a truly genuine answer; he never pretended that he loved his job every day; he never pretended that he was happy every day in P&G. Instead, what he said was honest and deep hearted: most of the times he enjoyed his work. And I bet all my money that this enjoyment of the work led to him being very productive!
