From cost to capacity – three questions about new technology and human performance

Sound familiar? The calendar is full, the inbox keeps growing and the days are spent putting out whatever is on fire right now. The strategy exists, but it often ends up at the bottom of the pile.

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This article takes on three questions that many managers carry with them:

1. Can 12 minutes a day really make a difference?
2. Do we see employees as a cost – or as the people who create success?
3. How do we get out of firefighting mode and start following our strategy?

In this article we explore the questions through the application of new technology. Leadership tools that make something otherwise invisible visible: how people in the organisation are actually doing and performing over time. The framework combines the body's signals, employees' own reflections and smart analysis, and turns them into a basis managers can act on.

1. Can 12 minutes a day really make a difference?

Yes – but not because 12 minutes is a lot of time. It's about a coffee break. The power lies in that small moment coming back every day and shifting your focus: from what is happening right now to what is important.

Think of it as stopping to look at the map. It doesn't take long, but it determines whether the rest of the journey goes in the right direction.

How it works in practice

In Zmartrest's model, employees do three things every day: collect their data, close their rings and reflect for a moment. At the end of the week a personal report shows when things were heavy and when there was room to catch your breath. The team meets and talks based on two simple questions: How hard are we pushing? and What matters? All of this happens in five-week periods that repeat throughout the year.

What does the research say?

Stopping to reflect pays off. In one study, new hires spent the last quarter of an hour of the day writing down what they had learned. After ten days they performed almost 23 percent better on the final test than colleagues who kept working as usual – despite working 15 minutes less per day [2].

What gets followed up gets done. A review of 138 experiments shows that people who regularly monitor their progress are more likely to reach their goals. The effect was even greater when progress was written down and shared with others [3] – just like when a team looks at its data together.

Concrete plans beat good intentions. Deciding when, where and how to do something clearly increases the chance that it gets done [4].

Small progress gives energy. Researchers at Harvard read almost 12,000 diary entries from employees. What most often made a working day good was the feeling of making progress on something meaningful – even in small steps [6].

The body can be trained. Feedback on heart rate variability, i.e. how the heart responds to strain and rest, can reduce stress and improve performance [8]. Short breaks give more energy and less fatigue [7].

The game of small decisions

A new habit doesn't stick after a week. In a well-known study it took on average just over two months – 66 days – before a new daily behaviour felt automatic. Missing a day here and there made little difference [5]. That's why it is wise to work in recurring periods rather than with a one-off effort.

2. Are employees a cost – or the people who create success?

The answer is both. The problem is that only one of them shows up in the accounts.

Salaries appear in black and white in the income statement. But what employees create – satisfied customers, smart solutions, good decisions – only shows up later and rarely with their names on it. That's why it's easy to steer by what you can see: the cost.

Make capacity visible

Human Performance Intelligence shifts the focus from what employees cost to what they are capable of. Zmartrest describes it as four interconnected parts:

• Workload – how much demand and pressure rests on people
• Recovery and energy – how well they manage to recharge
• Focus – how well they can concentrate and make decisions
• Collaboration – how well they work together

None of these show up in a salary budget. But all of them affect the result.

What does the research say?

Employees' applied knowledge creates results. A large review of 66 studies shows a clear link between employees' knowledge and skills and how well the company performs. The effect is strongest for knowledge that is unique to that particular company and hard to buy in from outside [12].

How you lead people shows in the numbers. A classic study of almost 1,000 US companies showed that good HR practices led to lower staff turnover, higher productivity and better profitability [13]. Later research has confirmed the link [14].

Engaged teams earn more. Gallup has followed more than 180,000 work groups. The most engaged groups were 23 percent more profitable than the least engaged [10].

Even the stock market misses it. Companies named the best workplaces in the US delivered higher returns than the market as a whole over 25 years [11]. In other words, investors had undervalued satisfied employees.

What does it cost not to act?

A lot. Only one in five employees in the world is engaged in their work, and Gallup estimates that this costs the global economy around 10 trillion dollars a year. Particularly worrying is that managers' engagement has plummeted in recent years [9]. In Zmartrest's model this is called Cost of Inaction (COI): the price of doing nothing.

3. How do we get out of firefighting mode?

Most fast-growing organisations have a strategy. What's often missing is the room to follow it. The days fill up with the urgent, and the important has to wait.

It's rarely down to ill will. It's because management sees the problems too late.

The problem with late signals

Think about how most organisations follow up: sick leave, staff turnover, quality defects, missed deliveries. It's like driving a car by only looking in the rear-view mirror. By the time the numbers show it, the problems have already grown.

On top of that, the information is scattered across different systems, is perhaps measured once a year and rarely says what you should actually do.

Why do we become event-driven?

We are interrupted all the time. Microsoft has measured that a typical employee is interrupted roughly every two minutes – around 275 times per working day – by meetings, emails and chats. Almost half experience their work as chaotic and lacking support for refocusing [15].

Every interruption costs more than you think. When we switch tasks, part of our mind stays with the previous one. That makes us worse at the next thing we take on [16].

Firefighting easily becomes culture. A researcher followed a team of engineers for nine months. They constantly interrupted each other, and whoever rescued a crisis was praised. That kept the team stuck in a feeling of never having enough time. When the team began protecting time for uninterrupted work, they became more productive [17].

When stress is highest, we rest the worst. Researchers call it the recovery paradox: precisely when we need recovery the most, it is hardest to get [18].

Strategy loses value along the way. A study of almost 200 companies showed that strategies on average delivered only 63 percent of the value they promised. Clear priorities and continuous follow-up were two of the keys to closing the gap [19].

From rear-view mirror to windscreen

Human Performance Intelligence is about looking forward instead of backward. When management gets early signals about how the organisation is doing and coping, it can act before the problems show up in the numbers.

In Zmartrest's annual cycle, management, managers and employees move at the same pace. Four times a year a five-week period is run. In between, management checks two measures – how people are performing and what it costs not to act (Cost of Inaction, COI) – and asks three simple questions: Good? Better? How?

Two things that make the difference

The manager must lead the way. Gallup shows that when managers actively support their team's use of new digital tools, the tools are used significantly more often: 79 percent versus 46 percent [9]. The technology only works if management stands behind it.

It should feel like support. The purpose is to help people, not to scrutinise them. Managers see the team's overall picture, not individuals' data. And the insights are a basis for conversation – not a truth that replaces it.

Three questions – one context

The three questions are connected like links in a chain:

• 12 minutes a day creates habits of reflection, follow-up and planning.
• The habits make capacity visible – and then employees can be seen as an asset, not a cost.
• When capacity is visible early, management can steer by the strategy instead of chasing events.

Technology doesn't take over leadership. It makes it better informed.