The urge to look for quick and visible gains can be greatly tempting in the face of increased pressure on margins, intensified competition, and stagnation (or erosion) of results. However, such strategies often lead to a sense of disappointment as they focus solely on optimizing the execution of activities and operations without questioning the fundamental structure of work.
This reflection is particularly crucial in the Canadian context, as the country’s labor productivity remains significantly lower compared to several similar economies. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada’s hourly labor productivity level is 30% lower than that of the United States. This disparity has direct implications for the standard of living, businesses’ investment capacity, and long-term competitiveness.
Quebec also lags behind by approximately 30% compared to the average of developed economies, as highlighted in the “Blue Book of Productivity” released in March 2025 by the Quebec Chamber of Commerce Federation. Such discrepancies significantly impact living standards, companies’ investment capabilities, and long-term competitiveness.
One of the primary sources of productivity gains largely remains underexploited because it is less visible and tangible. This source is the operational model, specifically the processes that materialize it. While the overhaul may seem complex and demanding, it allows for a profound change embedding and avoiding superficial solutions without added value or behaviors conflicting with the company’s ambitions.
Avoiding False Debates
Discussing productivity without first clarifying what is meant by “performance” quickly leads to misunderstandings. Performance is not merely about increasing volumes or reducing unit costs; it is based on the balance of three inseparable dimensions.
The first is value, the organization’s ability to meet a genuine expectation (from a customer, user, or partner) in a relevant and distinctive manner. Producing more only makes sense if this increased production corresponds to recognized value.
The second is efficiency, how effectively this value is created. It refers to how human, financial, and technological resources are mobilized to produce a useful result.
The third is sustainability, the ability to maintain this performance over time without exhausting teams, increasing organizational or technological debt, or degrading social or environmental impacts.
An enterprise that proves truly successful is necessarily productive. Conversely, a company productive in the strict sense—producing more, faster—is not always globally successful. It is possible to increase the pace while degrading quality, customer experience, team engagement, or system resilience.
Defined in this way, productivity is not just about executing activities faster but also creating more value per unit of time invested. It involves a systematic reduction of everything that does not add value: waiting times, rework, redundant controls, fragmented decisions, conflicting priorities, resource waste, and more.
Where Productivity Gets Lost
A productivity deficit can manifest at all levels of the operational model.
A strategically unclear or poorly defined vision leads to the mobilization of energy on secondary, or even contradictory, priorities. In other words, there is a lot of work, but not necessarily on what creates the most value.
A functional but fragmented organization creates silos, multiple transfers, and areas of non-responsibility. Work progresses in fits and starts, driven by validations and judgments rather than as a continuous flow.
Key skills may be misplaced: experts may be overloaded, constantly sought after to compensate for structural weaknesses, while other skills remain underutilized.
Governance focused on activity rather than results, combined with leadership out of sync with the required posture, leads to tracking volumes, loads, or compliance at the expense of actual value creation.
All these elements crystallize in processes. Processes act as a mirror of the organization’s actual functioning, beyond org charts or rhetoric.
Processes as Strategic Revealers
Often seen from a technical perspective—sequences of activities, tools, forms, deadlines—processes reveal how an organization thinks and arbitrates: who decides, on what criteria, when, and with what responsibility.
It is not merely a chain of actions; it is a value creation mechanism that transforms a strategic intent into concrete results. Revising a process is not just about speeding up execution but also questioning its foundations:
- Whom does it truly benefit?
- What promise does it serve?
- Where is value truly created?
- Where does it dilute? In friction, waiting times, rework?
- Who is responsible for the final result, not just each isolated step?
Such an overhaul almost always involves shifting the center of gravity: less control, more empowerment; less task logic, more flow logic; less purely technological solutions, more clarity on work organization.
This is precisely why many automation or digital transformation initiatives fail to yield lasting gains. They enhance poorly designed processes, sometimes reinforcing complexity and tool dependency without addressing root causes. Thus, optimal use of artificial intelligence, for instance, complements evolving and optimizing processes in an orderly and logical manner.
The Need for a Systemic Approach
Confronted with a productivity issue, organizations are naturally drawn to the most visible symptom: bottlenecks, overloaded teams, or obsolete tools, for example. However, these manifestations are rarely isolated. They often stem from a deeper and systemic misalignment.
Sustainably improving productivity requires moving beyond treating symptoms to adopting a comprehensive approach, considering the operational model as a coherent whole. The model can be analyzed through six closely interconnected axes, whose effects reinforce each other.
- Value Chain and Processes: Determine where value is truly created and where it dilutes.
- Organizational Structure: Defines who decides, at what level, and with what degree of autonomy.
- Governance and Leadership: Influence the organization’s decision-making capacity and team support in tension areas.
- Data and Indicators: Shape behaviors: what is measured becomes what is optimized.
- Talents and Skills: Directly impact flow fluidity. High process or skill debt slows the system and excessively relies on a few key skills.
- Technology: Should support value flow, not restrict it. Automation is meaningful only if it genuinely eliminates low-value work, not cementing suboptimal processes.
Continuous Improvement as a Productivity Lever
Well-known and proven methods—such as the Lean model, value chain mapping, or DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Innovate, Implement, Control)—can help structure the analysis and avoid intuitive or symptomatic decisions. However, the method itself does not create performance. Without genuine adoption by managers and teams, it remains a formal framework disconnected from daily operations.
It is essential to understand that continuous improvement is not a one-time endeavor or a specialist project. It is built over time through simple yet demanding routines: result-focused reviews instead of activity-focused ones; short experiments with explicit success criteria; clear visualization of flows; and, most importantly, assertive decisions on what to stop and what to continue.
This discipline, more than tool sophistication, transforms DMAIC and continuous improvement initiatives into tangible operational advantages. When integrated into daily management, these practices become managerial reflexes serving value creation.
A Change in Posture Above All
Seeking productivity gains without revisiting the operational model creates an illusion of performance. An organization may be bustling, yet failing to transform its genuine value creation capacity. While tactical levers indeed induce movement, they rarely create lasting impact.
Improving productivity necessitates shifting from activity control logic to result accountability logic. This requires questioning the processes, decision rules, and implicit priorities structuring work. The observed resistance is not cultural but rational; teams cannot be asked to perform better in a system that is not evolving.
In essence, the challenge lies not in productivity but in managerial courage. The courage to review what genuinely structures work, to simplify where complexity has settled, and to make clear choices on what creates or does not create value. Progressing organizations will not be those doing more but those making better decisions.
Note:
1 – Quebec Chamber of Commerce Federation, “Blue Book of Productivity: 40 recommendations for quick action on multiple fronts,” report published in March 2025.
