CPC Perspective - A considered point of view from the Canada

Many organizations set productivity goals with the best intentions: increase output, reduce cycle time, improve efficiency. Targets are defined, dashboards updated, and expectations communicated. Yet progress stalls, or worse, pressure increases without meaningful improvement.

The problem is rarely the goal itself. It’s the system underneath it.

Productivity goals fail when they are layered onto systems that were never designed to support them. When workflows are fragmented, decision rights unclear, incentives misaligned, or learning loops weak, goals become sources of strain rather than drivers of performance.

In these conditions, teams compensate with effort:

• longer hours
• workarounds
• heroic problem-solving

Short-term results may appear, but they rarely last.

System design shifts the conversation from what we want to achieve to how work actually moves. It examines where decisions sit, how information flows, what slows progress, and what behaviors the system rewards. Without this foundation, productivity targets act like instructions without infrastructure.

The most sustainable productivity gains come not from pushing harder but from designing systems that make better performance easier, repeatable, and resilient.

Productivity improves when systems do, not when pressure does.
This is the distinction CPC continues to emphasize: productivity is not a target to hit; it’s a system to design.