What happened to our productivity?

We are all working harder and longer hours, still productivity is going down, what is happening? What are we doing wrong?

Photo by Aaron Escobar Flickr CC

Margaret Heffernan writes on BNET that:

"Despite long-term increases in labor productivity, the average return on assets (ROA) of American companies has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of what it was in 1965. That is despite (or because of) new technology, the Internet, personal computing, mobile connectivity and the insane hours we all work."

She refers to Deloitte's macro-economic report called "The Shift Index 2009" which

"suggests the current recession is masking long-term competitive challenges for U.S. businesses. Among the key findings, U.S. companies’ return on assets (ROA) have progressively dropped 75 percent from their 1965 level despite rising labor productivity. Even the highest-performing companies are struggling to maintain their ROA rates and increasingly losing market leadership positions."

I believe that we need to rethink management's role and purpose. We seem to have a major problem in learning from research, probably because of fear of being seen as odd or unrealistic.

To me the report gives us all the necessary clues, our machines and workers are better than ever, we have email and Internet for communication, still we fail to produce products and services that customers value.

Personally I feel that we need to learn to use the social networking tools in order to share information better and faster. Only if we share the challenges can people contribute, I feel that the solution lies in the direction of a more open and participative management - a crowd-sourcing of marketing, maybe.

What are your thoughts, do you find me a unrealistic dreamer, or do you feel that "The Shift Index" is proof enough that something has to change?