ideas: Productivity Challenge

The New Productivity Challenge by Peter F. Drucker @ Harvard Business Review (1991)
...single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the world is to raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers.
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For the last 120 years, productivity in making and moving things—in manufacturing, farming, mining, construction, and transportation—has risen in developed countries at an annual rate of 3% to 4%, a 45-fold expansion overall.
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The productivity revolution is over because there are too few people employed in making and moving things for their productivity to be decisive. All told, they account for no more than one-fifth of the work force in developed economies.
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when farmers make up only 3% of the employed population, as they do in the United States, Japan, and most of Western Europe, even record increases in their output add virtually nothing to their country’s overall productivity and wealth.
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The most pressing social challenge developed countries face, however, will be to raise the productivity of service work. "
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In knowledge work, defining the task and getting rid of what does not need to be done is even more necessary and produces even greater results

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nurses now spend only half their time doing what they have learned and are paid to do—nursing. The other half is eaten up by activities that do not require their skill and knowledge (paperwork)

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