Notes from the Consultant’s Jungle

It’s increasingly clear that the current economic situation (‘intentionally avoiding negative words to send positive vibes out there to the investors) is impacting worker productivity at a number of levels.

Last week I attended the AFCOM Data Center World conference in Orlando, Fl.  While sitting in on a presentation about IT automation, the subject turned to the perils of loosely managed change control.  The speaker asked, “What is the biggest source of problems today?”  One of the attendees shouted out, “Greed!”  The speaker paused for a moment, and politely explained that he was looking for the word “change.”  Clearly the gentleman in the audience had his head elsewhere, but I’ll bet that many others in the audience did as well.

I have to believe that most everyone is having a difficult time concentrating on the task at hand these days.  When every morning and evening’s headlines emphasize doom and ruin it’s understandably hard to focus.

To what degree this is impacting worker productivity is difficult to surmise.  How can we know if the degree of one’s own distraction is consistent with others?  It may be safe to say though, that organizations are increasingly paralyzed by uncertainty and worry at a holistic level

This is a risk to good value delivery and also to service continuity.  Aside from any spending impacts the sense of crisis is clearly impacting employee performance individually, and is challenging the collective behavior of the organization.

Please share your thoughts regarding how the distractions of a global crisis are impacting the performance of your organization.