Productivity as doing more with less in saner ways

By Renton de Alwis

We tend to make all sorts of New Year resolutions at this time of the year. This column written on New Year’s eve in 2010, focussed on a simple resolution we could all make. Given that our evening news is full of stories of village and national level follies of badly done infrastructure projects, wasted resources, corrupt practises etc., one is left to wonder if the focus on the bigness of projects we seem to undertake will ever take us to be the wonder we seek to be. As a nation we perhaps will need to begin to do the little things right, including preventive action on many fronts, without spending scores on fancy projects all at once .Within our traditional ethos we did have these systems well in place, yet have lost it somewhere, somehow. This dawn of the New Year may be a good time for us to reflect on such, that some may consider ‘trivia’ and get the basics right, before indulging in the galloping.

 

A bill board calling for entries for a poster competition on enhancing productivity caught my eye in Colombo. The theme proposed for this 2011 effort was “Productivity begins at home”. This triggered many memories in my mind’s-eye on what and how we may want to look at our efforts at productivity.

I remember about a decade or so ago, when I was living in Singapore, how I needed to get professional help in moving to a new apartment to fix nails on walls to hang paintings. A simple job, but like I may have done back home, I could not drive nails myself into the wall. My rental contract specified what I could and could not do. I was told by Mr. Lee (forgot his first name), the professional wall paintings hanger I employed for the job, that it was so to make sure that the electrical wiring embedded on the walls was not damaged, causing danger to oneself and to other inhabitants. He mentioned that both individuals and the state would save costs on hospitalisation and health care by preventing such accidents. “We could use that money for other more important purpose” he said. What a thought from a picture hanger professional.

No messy ways

What he did next impressed me even more. Out of his bag he took out his tool-belt and fixed it around his waist.  It had a drill, drill-bits, screw drivers, hammers, a hair-dryer like vacuum-sucker and a lot of other titbits, all neatly arranged in pockets. He then took out a few old newspapers he carried in the bag and neatly laid them on the floor at the point where he was to drill holes for fixing the paintings. Thereafter, he made sure the ladder was well-secured and climbed it. Upon marking the spot on the wall, he held the drill with one hand and the vacuum-sucker with the other and drilled the holes as needed. The vacuum-sucker took-in all the dust that came from the drill-hole and any large pieces of plaster that fell landed on the newspaper. When moving to next the place he made sure that the previous work place was clean and tidy without need to clean it once again.

Minimise effort

The morale of my explaining this event in such detail is to show that productivity is mostly about attention to detail and about preventive care. It is about not having to repeat unproductive tasks and to ensure that each step taken contributes to minimise resource use, effort and time taken to complete a task. Just recall the times we have seen our own plumbers, painters, carpenters, motor mechnics and some of us ourselves, searching for dropped tools, nuts and bolts, nails and go several times back and forth to bring things they/we need.  

Remember the good old saying in song “Do what you do, do well, Son”. That to me, is lesson one on how we could seek to be productive.

Saving lives

Just last week, I was told by a friend that a well-known Sri Lankan surgeon had mentioned to him that a good percentage of surgery done at our hospitals could be avoided and many lives saved, if we were to take a simple precaution on our roads at night. And that is about making it mandatory for all bicycles to have that little red piece on its mudguards that will shine when an approaching vehicle’s lights falls on it. A mandatory requirement of a luminous patch to be worn on the back of riders of all two wheel vehicles at night will be even better. Both inexpensive solutions to act as preventive measures in saving many lives lost on our roads at night and saving immense resources spent on surgery and care at our hospitals on such accident victims. Not to mention the impact such accidents have on the families of the victims, loss of opportunity to lead healthy, productive lives and the unnecessary burden placed on the heath spend of the State.

Nab violators

The other would be of reckless bus and other drivers that ply our roads who themselves cause or effect to cause accidents of pedestrians, cyclists and other law abiding drivers. Here it must involve sterner action by the Police, of drivers who flout road rules, regardless of how influential the owners of these busses and vehicles are or whose pictures they display on the back and sides of the busses. In other words, the drivers of productivity in this instance must be our Police officers, who must be encouraged to nab violators without exception.

That must also include some of the glitzy four-wheel-drives and security vehicles that often push other users off the road without any rational need for it. This is a totally unproductive exercise designed perhaps, only to impress us the voters, of the acquired powers of those we have sought to elect. They seem to forget that the terrorist threats of blowing up our leaders, does not exist any longer. We then, gladly tolerated such need, but today we do not see any productive purpose served by it.

Preventive care

Going back once again to Singapore, I remember how every painter there was carrying a clean white cloth on his work-belt hung around the waist. Each time a bit of extra paint dripped on a wall, door or window frame, they would wipe it clean with the cloth instantly, without letting it dry-up. In similar circumstances, I have observed many of our painters having to clean up the dried extra bits of paint with thinner, with additional effort, loss of work time and cost.

Good practises

We as a nation have been adopting the Japanese work ethic on achieving productivity through attempts at practising the Five ‘S’ principle of Seiri (to sort), Seiton (to straighten or set in order), Seisou (to shine or sweep), Seiketsou (to standardise) and Shitsuke ( to sustain). The other day, I was impressed with what I saw at the Divisional Secretariat Office at Ambalantota. They not only demonstrated on the walls of their office, that they practiced Five ‘S’ systems, but also demonstrated through actions, that it was indeed in effective operation. I am certain that there are many other organizations and institutions both in the state and private sectors in Sri Lanka, that effectively practice sound productivity initiatives. Yet, they still are exceptions rather than the rule.

New Year resolution

What we would need during this phase of our post-conflict development is to create and sustain a culture of productivity, that counts on doing more with less, where preventive maintenance, fair and right practices, prevention of waste and achieving high levels of sustained quality should be the rule, rather than the exception. It can indeed begin with each of us, within our families, extended to our work places and then on to the whole nation. When another new year dawns, we owe it to ourselves and to our future generations, to resolve to do more with less, in more efficient and saner ways.