CLEAR THINKING, LESS FLUFF
Want more productivity? Stop using corporate speak.
We no longer say what we mean in the workplace, and it is costly.
You have no doubt been subjected to corporate speak. And worse, you’ve probably been guilty of it too.
Across white-collar Australia, we sit in meeting rooms nodding to language that we do not understand. Graduates generate unnecessary work blindly chasing directives that are fluffy and nice. And executives make poor decisions because no one was brave enough to state an uncomfortable problem clearly.
It’s not where you work, but why.
As job demand eases and power swings back to employers, CEOs are making their message clear. They want workers in the office. Or as some call it, “working from work”.
Proponents of mandatory office returns typically deploy three main arguments: the need to lift employee productivity, the importance of coaching junior employees, and the benefits of spontaneous collaboration and “corridor conversations”.
What do people do all day? Why Australian businesses should care.
Australia's productivity growth has hit a 60-year low, and the national discussion has defaulted to much needed, but familiar ground: tax reform, less red tape and adoption of artificial intelligence.
Important as these are, there's an internal frontier we too often ignore; what the childhood author Richard Scarry titled one of his most famous books: "What do people do all day?"
Keep pay simple. Motivate with meaning.
Think back to the financial year just passed: Was your best work motivated by your individual performance incentive? If your salary had been commensurate but fixed, would you have been less effective? And was all the time and energy you spent on performance bonuses for your team really worth it?
In some jobs – think sales – the case for performance-based incentives is more obvious. But if the work you do is more intangible – strategic, creative, collaborative – can your contribution really be accurately determined?
What if AI doesn’t take your job, but makes you love it?
John Kenneth Gailbraith once said that the only function of economic forecasting was to make astrology look respectable. But recent bold predictions over Artificial Intelligence is giving astrology a run for its money.
A few weeks back the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, said AI could send unemployment as high as 20 per cent. Elon Musk went so far as to say that AI will take all our jobs.
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