Achieving political productivity
‘It’s important that [we] understand what productivity is’ says Claire Farren, leader and mentor of productivity improvement. Being busy does not automatically entail productivity, she argues, and associating the two would be ‘completely missing the mark’. So, what is the definition of productivity? For Claire, productivity centres around getting things done on time, with the least amount of procrastination, at the best time of day for you personally. In order to achieve these outcomes, Claire advocates an awareness towards managing expectations. The Silent MP chatted with Claire in order to uncover the ways in which managing expectations can lead to an improvement in productivity.
Firstly, Claire explains, we must take the time to truly understand the strengths and weaknesses of both ourselves and our teams. In fact, through a correct analysis of these two elements, we can discover exactly what type of support we need, and which skills the people working by our side must have. Now, this quite simple process is often ignored due to time constraints and the general pressures of politics, yet taking the time out to sit with your staff and ask them “what are you good at? What do you enjoy doing?”, will lead to a better allocation of resources and thus more efficient productivity in the long run.
It is crucial to build our team carefully, assessing the personalities and abilities we need to support our work. Increasingly often, MPs tend to hire the people who support them during their political campaigns because they have already gained some element of trust. However, this is not always the most productive decision, as those individuals may not actually have the characteristics or skills that are needed within the team.
Perhaps the most fundamental message from Claire is the importance of learning how and when to say no. Politicians and their staff tend to be value-driven, with a commitment to helping others in any way possible. This tendency, whilst noble, often means that politicians and their staff also feel an inherent sense of responsibility to take on every given task. ‘Unfortunately, I think that in the political environment, we say yes to everything’, begins Claire, ‘then, we figure out later which things are going to be postponed or we are going to have to be late with. And, actually, it’s quite damaging to people's reputation’. In other words, saying yes to everything essentially ends up backfiring. The politician and their staff inevitably takes too much on, and will not be able to deliver on their expectations. Eventually, this leads to those who provided the initial task to lose trust and confidence in the politician and their staff to deliver.
So, how do politicians say no?
The answer to this question, Claire explains, is rather simple. Rather than a straight-up ‘yes’ or ‘no’, we should instead caveat our responses with some semblance of expectation management. For example, Claire tells us that an expectation managed response to a request would be something like “I can’t do that today, because I’ve got x, y and z to deliver, unless you want me to put one of those back. If not, I can do it for you on Friday”. This response fulfils value-driven motivations whilst also giving us a certain degree of breathing room to feasibly achieve what is being asked of us.
This skill is not something that needs to be nurtured only in the politician but in their entire team, by creating a political office culture that is at the ready to flexibly protect a politician’s medium to long term policy agenda, while accommodating time needed to respond to issues of the day or put out political fires. There is an important balance to be struck here. In the words of the former corporate philosopher, Peter Drucker, ‘there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all’.
Achieving political productivity is about developing the skill and political office culture of iterative expectation management in a constantly pressurised political environment. In order to make the most of limited time, certain value judgements must be made; firstly, on the strengths and weaknesses of your team, and secondly on the ability to nurture the politicians short to long term aspirations and democratic deliverables.
