Word Play 3: Common “currency” for measuring productivity?

I’ve had a nasty brush with my boss on Wednesday. Many topics were brought up, but till this day, a spot of bother for me has been the misuse of the term productivity in his statements. He had directly equated the productivity of a certain department in office to its (in)ability to bring in donations.

Let us have a look at productivity from dictionary.com then.
1. The quality, state, or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance, or bring forth goods and services.
2. Economics: the rate at which goods and services having exchange value are brought forth or produced.
3. Grammar: the ability to form new words using established patterns and discrete linguistic elements, as the derivational affixes -ness and -ity .

Even though the context of productivity is applied more towards economics and linguistics, as seen in points 2 and 3, the universally applied terms of generation, creation and enhancement of products and services of a certain quality appear, as seen in the first definition.

In the recent light of how SMRT has grossly underperformed, it is definitely agreed that SMRT is not being productive at all. It may hae even been counterproductive. No doubt SMRT management has been churning in increased profits consistently per annum, it has become complacent in generation of acceptable quality transport, not even to say enhance current transport quality.

A major "habit of convenience" employers have, especially in Singapore, would be to equate productivity with the rate at which income and profits are being generated. They have directly linked income and profits to productivity. However, they have fallen into a “blind spot” of sorts.

The logic behind productivity is:
1. Products or services of acceptable or even enhanced quality are generated
2. These products or services’ demand rises, leading to increase sales, bringing increased income level and profits
3. The income and profit level are thus a measurement of the rate of generation and enhancement of the goods and service.

However, what if income and profit generation, are not through generation and enhancement of the products and services? Firstly, demand may not increase solely due to betterment of the quality of a product. It may simply be just because there are more consumers. Taking SMRT as an example, just because there are more passengers, does not mean its service has improved. It is simply because commuters have no better alternative at the same pricing. With the increased population in Singapore due to influx of people from overseas, the overall number of commuters has increased, definitely translating into increased revenue for SMRT. A second, and even more horrifying notion, is that income generation is not through increased demand at all, but through reduction of expenses or increase of pricing. Reduction of expenses may very well compromise on the quality of the product, whereas increased pricing put a very heavy burden unto consumers, especially if the product and service are necessities...

Dollars and cents are not necessarily the best measure of the productivity of a company, organization or department all the time. The relation between dollars and cents to the amount and quality of service is secondary at best.

Now let me apply it to the particular department in question my boss was talking about. The department as absolutely no direct relations to fundraising and donations, thus it is a “leap of faith” to measure its productivity in relation to fundraising and donations brought in. However, this does not mean, that department has gone “scot free”. The department has to ensure continuous generation and enhancement of its products and services, to convince donors that this organization is a worthwhile place to donate to. With regard to this aspect, I’m still very new to this department, thus I’m in no position yet to assess their productivity using this criteria.

Nevertheless, it is essential and even critical to get the degree of relations and relevance of dollars and cents to our productivity right, and stop worshipping this type of “common sense” blindly, lest we lose all "direction sense" eventually… Just look at the number and frequency of public transport fiascos. This norm is simply not acceptable!