We live in a world that is constantly looking at productivity. How can we as a society extract more productivity out of our employees? How can we micromanage people so that they are good little units of production? Our education system is gear up towards it. Our government is reducing the creativity and increasing the productivity. It’s not all work, work, work.
This is Paul Reed Smith. He is the founder of PRS Guitars. They are possibly the most desirable guitars on the planet. Possibly because everyone has personal preferences. The whole clip is about how to create something wonderful. But from 8mins 50seconds (where it should have started when you clicked it) he outlines his company’s ethics. He outlines how to get the best out of people working there – Collaboration, value and investing in people.
In most of our workplaces we have lost sight of the value that is placed in the people who form the company. Everything can be boiled down to a simple equation with profit as the key value. Ultimately, productivity is not optimised through coercion and the threat of punitive measures. As Mr Smith says, “I don’t want to restrict what they need to do as artists otherwise really gifted people won’t stay?”.
So how can we think about this as a wider issue, and how can we think about it as a Church (TM)?