Productivity Paranoia: The True Obstacle to Hybrid Work (Wise Decision Maker Guide 88)

Greetings Decision maker,

Do bosses trust employees to be productive when working remotely?

Microsoft released a new study, where it found that 85% of leaders say that the “shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.” More concretely, 49% of managers of hybrid workers “struggle to trust their employees to do their best work.” This lack of trust in worker productivity has led to what Microsoft researchers termed productivity paranoia: “where leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings, and other activity metrics have increased.”

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What's Up With Me

It’s an exciting time: time to start seeds for my vegetable garden! While it’s a lot of work to nurse seeds from planting all the way to harvest - and much easier to just buy seedlings from a nursery - I’ve found overall it’s worth the sweat equity. Starting plants from seeds myself allows me to grow a much bigger variety of plants while saving quite a bit of money. Additionally, there’s a personal satisfaction in raising plants from seeds all the way to mature plants, watching them grow from tiny sprouts to mighty plants.

In essence, by going to seeds and skipping seedlings, I’ve moved up the value chain and vertically integrated the production process. It’s a useful mindset to have. What about you: where can you gain benefits by vertically integrating the production process? Sometimes the reverse makes more sense; narrowing the value chain under your control and specializing in a small segment of it. It’s all about the costs and benefits, but the key is to approach this question intentionally.