Artikel
22 maj 2025 · 4 min lästidMany Finnish companies are looking for ways to improve productivity – and for good reason. Productivity has lagged for years, despite significant investments in systems, development projects, and strategies. Often, the problem is not the amount of work being done or the lack of technology. The primary concern is how we perceive work, who carries it out, and how we build our organisations to facilitate it.
Nitor's Senior Enterprise Coach, Otto Halonen, offers three ways for organisations to build a more productive day-to-day, without people burning out or drowning in change management jargon.
1. Bring development work back to reality
Company development – all the work aimed at improving the company's operations – often progresses separately from the everyday production work. While both are necessary, development projects often live completely detached from the activities to meet customer needs. However, development work is only meaningful when it guides production in a more positive direction.
Suppose the main task of Eino's lemonade is to quench customers' thirst. In this case, it is worth considering whether constant meetings about the requirements of an enterprise resource planning system contribute to that mission.
"The key is to ask how the project relates to lemonade production and how the ERP system renewal project helps to do it better, or whether it is the best solution given limited resources," says Halonen.
Bringing development work back into everyday work starts with a simple change. What if everyone remembered at the beginning of the meeting that the primary task is to quench customers' thirst? Then the shared direction would remain clearer in the meeting. That way, companies ensure development initiatives serve the mission of producing lemonade, rather than getting sidetracked by secondary issues.
2. Break the grip of over-specialisation
The over-specialisation dilemma means that the support functions, such as finance, IT, and legal, start driving the operations instead of the actual mission. Resources and attention are sidelined as support functions focus on building their systems and processes. This results in a company delivering efficient financial management and fancy legal documentation, yet not offering either service.
"A lawyer's main role is not to provide legal services, but to ensure that the company carries out its mission legally and securely. That's why job descriptions should serve the business and mission of the firm, not the management or organisational structure," Halonen points out.
Companies can avoid over-specialisation by separating competences and job descriptions – they do not mean the same thing. Instead of hiring people primarily to do financial management, analytics or information security, companies should hire people from different disciplines to develop the core of the business. What we should do is an entirely different question from what kind of skills we need.
Companies have hired managers, strategists and other non-production people to drive the mission – what if we tied the company mission as the primary responsibility in each of our job descriptions? When every employee, whether an accountant, lawyer, engineer or data analyst, internalises the reason for the company's existence, decision-making is more likely to be based on that purpose.
3. Build teams around problems, not areas of expertise
Often, the people whose collaboration is most critical to the company's business belong to different departments and, in the worst case, are located on other floors. Collaboration remains superficial or non-existent, even though colliding with various experts would be exactly what the business needs.
Collaboration happens when people have the frictionless opportunity to meet each other in their everyday work. Bottling and selling lemonade require engineers, sales representatives, marketing professionals, graphic designers, financial experts, coders, and possibly a systems work expert to support the team.
These experts design the bottling process, create the brand's visual identity, market the delicious new product, make calculations, ensure the systems work, and coordinate the work. It goes without saying that everyday collaboration would significantly benefit both work efficiency and the company's productivity.
What if we just left our own corner at the office once in a while – and built teams primarily based on the skills needed to solve problems? It is secondary which unit in the organisational chart people work in. When information fails to transfer and dependencies increase, time, new ideas, and innovation potential are inevitably wasted.
Productivity arises from doing the right things together
Improving productivity does not require people to run faster or do more. It means doing the right things together and understanding why. For companies, this requires new thinking and the courage to clarify and simplify why the company exists.
Change is often uncomfortable, and it does not happen by itself. Investing in change management, facilitation, and coaching significantly increases the chances of successful change. Motivation grows when employees see how their work connects to the company's goal, without extra burden or stress.
"Productivity is not a mysterious secret. It results from clear purpose, effective collaboration, and smart choices," Halonen summarises.
