Why aren’t we more competitive when we work so hard?

As a manager, we all want people who can be trusted with responsibility. Those who finish work on time, give extra time when necessary, and do not hesitate to change their personal plans for the benefit of the organisation. We usually describe such people in one word - dedicated.

There is no denying their contribution to the success of any organisation. No organisation stands on lazy people, nor does any economy. Yet, one question has been on my mind for many years. Can human effort alone make an organisation more competitive?

The question may sound strange. Because since childhood, we have heard that there is no substitute for effort. This is undoubtedly true in personal life. But while running an organisation, I have gradually realised that another question is equally important. How much effort is being put in by people - is this the most important question? Or is it more important where, how, and for what purpose that effort is being directed?

I did not get the answer to this question from any book. Rather, a few isolated experiences have brought me back to the same place again and again.

A few years ago, I was doing a job assessing employee engagement and loyalty in a large organisation in Bangladesh. At that time, an incident deeply struck me. An employee of the organisation was working in a remote district of the country. He had only three days of leave allowed for his own wedding. However, it would have taken him almost two days to travel from work to his home.

From a logical point of view, the decision may not seem very unusual. The leave has been reduced so that the employee has to spend less time away from work and his presence at work is greater. But the incident made me face another question. Does a person create more value if he is present at work for more time?

The question was not about leave, but about a common management concept. Do we sometimes assume that presence is synonymous with productivity?

The incident was over, but the question remained for many years. Then, in a completely different context, the same question returned.

My job gives me the opportunity to regularly analyse the combined operational data of different organisations. At one point, our internal business intelligence team noticed a strange thing. There are two sales representatives, the same market, working about the same hours, visiting about the same number of retail stores.

Yet one of them was selling about six times more than the other. At first, it seemed like an exception. Maybe one was just more skilled than the other, maybe it was just a fact of life for one organisation. But when I analysed the combined data of different organisations, I found that the same kind of variation kept coming back.

Then the question was no longer about sales, it became about why the same amount of effort produced such a huge difference in results? First, we tested the simplest explanation. Maybe the one who was selling more was visiting more stores than the others.

But the data said otherwise. The number of times a sales representative visited stores had almost no relationship to sales. That is, simply going to more stores, being busier, or doing more activities - there was no strong correlation between sales.

Then we started looking at the question differently. We analysed the data on how many different retail stores a representative was able to convert into purchases. Now a completely different picture emerged. Here the relationship with sales was very strong. Then for the first time, something began to become clear.

The relationship with sales is not about the activity; it is about the value-creating activity.

This observation made me think about a bigger issue. We usually evaluate the efficiency of an organisation by how much work people are doing, how many times they go to customers, how many reports they submit, or how many hours they work.

Because, these are easy to see, easy to calculate, easy to show on a dashboard. But one thing is much harder. Which activity is really creating value? Two people can be equally busy all day, both can meet with the same number of customers, both can go home equally tired.

But if one person’s work converts more customers into purchases, and the other’s work does not, then at the end of the day their economic contribution will not be the same. This is where an important aspect of management begins to dawn on me. People generally pay more attention to the work that the organisation considers important.

If the organisation’s discussion, evaluation, and reward system prioritises performance, then people will focus on increasing performance. And if value creation is prioritised, then behaviour will gradually shift in that direction. In other words, the question is often not how hard people are working. The question is - What results are the organisation encouraging people to work for?

These two experiences - one about an employee’s wedding leave and another about analysing sales data - led me to the same realisation. We often see people working hard. But we see relatively little of the management, the priorities, and the decisions that drive that hard work.

Perhaps this is where the biggest lesson lies. People work hard. But management largely determines how much economic value will be created from that hard work.

These two experiences have left me with an uncomfortable question. The question is no longer about an organisation, but about a country, Bangladesh! I have no doubt about the hard work of the people of Bangladesh. In factories, in agriculture, in shops, in offices, in the transport sector, in the construction industry; millions of people work long hours every day. They are working despite limited resources, various adversities and numerous limitations.

There is very little opportunity to question the hard work of these people, but one question remains. If hard work were the main condition for competitive ability, wouldn’t we be much more competitive today?

Maybe the question is not about hard work, or at least not only about hard work. We usually discuss the competitive ability of a country in the context of infrastructure, technology, investment, skilled human resources or policies. These are important. But the experience of running an organisation makes me think about another thing.

The same people, the same working hours, the same resources, and yet two organisations can produce completely different results. One organisation can create much more economic value than another with the same number of employees. Where is the difference?

My experience is that in many cases the answer is not in the people, but in the management. We often assume that the most important asset of an organisation is its people. I completely agree with that. But we rarely ask one question. Are those people working within a system that helps their hard work create the highest value?

Because even a skilled person can produce limited results in a weak system. On the other hand, a strong management can often help an ordinary employee achieve extraordinary results. Perhaps this is why the world’s successful organisations did not succeed just by hiring good people.

They created better management systems. A good management system is not a substitute for human effort, but a multiplier of it. It tells us - which tasks are most important, which decisions should be made first, which customers should be prioritised, which activities are creating value, and which are just creating busyness.

Most importantly, it does not just teach people to work harder. It teaches - which tasks will create more value. This understanding also changes our question about management. We often ask - how can we make people work harder?

But perhaps the more important question is different. Have we created a management system where it is possible to create more economic value from the same people, the same time, and the same effort? The difference between these two questions is very subtle, but the difference in results is profound.

The first question increases the pressure on people. The second question challenges management to be better.

It seems to me that Bangladesh’s greatest strength is its people, their hard work, their adaptability, their ability to move forward despite adversity. Our greatest challenge is probably not there, but how effectively we can convert this enormous human effort into economic value.

Competitiveness is not just about doing more, it is about making better decisions; it is about setting better priorities. It is about building a management system that directs people’s hard work in the right direction.

Maybe that is where more productivity, more innovation, more competitive institutions start and ultimately, a more competitive Bangladesh.

We have every reason to be proud of the hard work of Bangladesh’s people. Now is the time to think about our ability to convert that hard work into more economic value. Because the competitiveness of a country depends not only on how hard people work; but on how much value we can create from that hard work.