OutSystems Productivity Improvement from Another Perspective
Paulo Rosado uses a “motto” (as you can see here) to explain how customers can increase productivity using OutSystems: “Build it Fast, Build it Right and Build it for the Future”. As he is an entrepreneur, it seems that it is his reading of the market. However, (I don’t know if this is a coincidence) this “motto” can be analysed from the business administration perspective.
Recent research concluded that big productivity improvements can be achieved without big investments, focusing on good management and knowledge workers’ self-management skills. This is because the relationship between individual work practices and productivity is positive and better than that, well-being at work and productivity has the highest significant positive relationship (Palvalin, 2018).
Drucker divided knowledge work productivity into two parts: “doing right things and doing things right”. The second, “doing things right”, focuses on the use of resources and the work process. It means that everything should be done in the best way possible and with minimal resources. The first, “doing right things”, is related to the other side of productivity, the outputs. An output needs to be valuable to the customer. It does not matter how efficient the organization is; if the value of the output is zero, the productivity is zero. On the other hand, if the organization is making a profit, it is most likely “doing the right thing”, and productivity development can focus more on “doing things right” (Palvalin, 2018)
Following the analogy above, "doing right things" and “doing things right” can be translated as "build it right" and "build it fast", respectively. Now the only remaining part to find out a relationship in the business administration area is "build it for the future".
Globalization and technology are changing the face of the business world (McKinsey & Company, 2017). According to McKinsey, global traffic data increased 500 times in a period of 12 years and Facebook reached the 50 million user mark in one year. Radio only reached this mark after 38 years. The same study estimates a market between $5 to 7 trillion dollars for the automation of knowledge work by 2025 and presents the speeding up of technological breakthroughs comparing the first phone call with the first i-Phone. The path toward the mobile internet took 115 years to reach the first website from the first phone call but spent 16 years to get to the first i-Phone. In summary, the time to achieve a disruptive innovation is decreasing quickly and every knowledge worker (KW) will need to be able to be selective, handle huge quantities of information, and learn to react to the changes at the same velocity.
If "build it for the future" can be another phrase to accept the change (see these words here from Gonçalo Gaiolas), there is no time to wait for it. It is arriving in large steps right in our faces.
I hope you liked this article and I wish you a nice week!
If you are interested a little more about productivity, like me, there is more information in my book here.
References
Palvalin, M. (2018). What matters for knowledge work productivity? Employee Relations.
McKinsey & Company (2017). The four global forces breaking all the trends.