Published January 2003

'Short run' successes important in the long run

Over the years, management science has developed an impressive array of methods to improve productivity and efficiency. There are, of course, always some things that simply don’t lend themselves to these techniques. Unfortunately, these are often the most important things.

When human relationships are directly involved, many of the usual tools that we managers reach for to improve efficiency and effectiveness often simply do not work for us (or, worse, they do work — but not in the way we expected).

The reason is that many of the best management tools deal with strategic, or “long run,” issues. There is no doubt that these are important, even crucial, to a company’s success — in the long run.

In most cases, though, managers typically don’t get to deal with these issues. Most days, most managers find themselves in “short run” business environments where success or failure is determined by the focus and level of effort put forth by the team of people they are responsible for. In the long run, of course, efficiency will be affected by decisions about technology, organizational structure, recruiting and retention, compensation and a host of other factors. But in the short run, none of those things really makes much difference. They are what they are.

In some respects, managers can take some solace in the knowledge that they are in the same situation as people they watch on television: football coaches.

For a coach, a “season” has meaning only in prospect or in retrospect. The reality of coaching is that a season is a series of games, and games are a series of plays.

Most coaching, like most management, is played out in the short run. In the long run, recruiting, equipment budgets, academic standards and a long list of other factors will affect the success of a football team. But in the short run, none of those factors really means much of anything. If it’s third and long and you need a tall cornerback, you can’t run out and recruit one. You need to convince the cornerback you already have to jump higher.

What really makes the difference is the level and intensity of effort with which the plays are executed. In football, focus and level of effort are a function of two things: training and motivation. Business is not football, of course, no matter how many parallels or analogies we might draw, but the focus and level of effort are a function of the same two things: training and motivation.

One of the earliest studies of efficiency in a group setting has become a classic in management literature. It is actually not a single study but a series of them, eventually called the “Hawthorne Experiments,” conducted over a period of years, 1924 to 1933, at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant just outside Chicago.

The original intent of the study was to find out what kind of workplace lighting led to the most efficient operations. After three years, the results were still inconclusive and Western Electric asked some of the folks at Harvard University for some help in interpreting the data. Harvard sent Elton Mayo and some others out to the Hawthorne plant to look into things.

To raise the scientific standards and make it a real “experiment,” Mayo and his colleagues peeled off a small group of workers, assigned an observer and began to vary things like lighting, wall color, work hours, etc., to see what effect they had on productivity — using the main work force as a “control group.”

What they found was that if they increased the lighting, productivity went up. But when they decreased the lighting, productivity went up again. When they brightened the wall color, productivity went up. And when they darkened the wall color, productivity went up, too. In fact, it seemed that no matter what they changed, productivity improved.

At first, and for a long time, this was totally confusing. Mayo, though, eventually figured out that it wasn’t what was being changed that made the difference but what remained constant: the level of attention being paid to the workers.

From a management standpoint, we can learn something from the Hawthorne Experiments, particularly if we combine them with what we know about coaching sports.

• Lesson one: Workers respond to attention, so pay attention to them. To motivate and focus effort, managers need to be seen and heard. This is particularly true in these trying economic times when people’s worries can get in the way of their motivation and productivity.
• Lesson two: Long-run success is built on short-run success. While long-term management issues need to be addressed, all the brilliant strategic business decisions in the world won’t help an organization that has forgotten how to succeed on a play-by-play, day-by-day basis.
• Lesson three: Remember that nobody said it would be easy.

James McCusker, a Bothell economist, educator and small-business consultant, writes “Your Business” in The Herald each Sunday. He can be reached by sending e-mail to otisrep@aol.com.

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