In Dale Dauten’s The Gifted Boss I’m learning about a concept he calls “productivity squared.” The basic idea of this concept is that you really want to make sure you hire someone you don’t have to manage too much so that productivity can be doubled. Here are the repercussions of hiring someone you have to spend a lot of time managing:
Pastor works 10 hours a day and naturally wants to get some help. So he convinces his boss to let him hire an assistant. Now the pastor is a manager, and with some help he/she cuts back to eight hours a day, the same as the new assistant.
Pastor: 10 – 2 = 8
Assistant: 8
Now, say the pastor spends two hours a day training, helping and supervising the assistant. Of course, the assistant also spends those same two hours being managed.
Pastor: 8 – 2 = 6
Assistant: 8 – 2 = 6
When you add up the two new totals, you get twelve. And then you look where we started, and it was ten. So the church went from ten hours of work a day to twelve hours a day. But it costs the church nearly double! That’s not good!
But look at the math when you hire someone self-motivated that needs very little management.
Pastor: 10 (You don’t hire help to work less hours, rather to spend more time working on the things that really matter – so the pastor continues working 10 hour days.)
Assistant: 7.5 (Since the assistant needs very little managing, the majority of the work day is spent actually working.)
Totals hours worked: 17.5 hours a day
That’s almost a 50% increase in productivity that comes as a result of hiring someone who doesn’t need to be managed too much!!! This is why this concept is called “productivity squared.” The goal is to double production, not to get minimal returns from significant investments (of time and money).
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