Day 16 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge.
Productive time should be one of our key focuses for our year ahead. Not productivity, that is something different. The number of outputs per hour is the responsibility of the delivery services rather than the ICT Services. What I mean is that we should focus on using technology to maximise the amount of time that is available to allow the users to do whatever it is that they do.
Productive time is when our customers do what they set out to do, teach, sweep, care, account, communicate – whatever. Unproductive time is when they don’t. We need to focus on making our technology work, to be available from wherever it is needed, to make it more usable, to make our clients more capable, to use technology to streamline processes and to make it easier for our customers to solve their own issues.
Paradoxically if we work harder to increase the delivery services’ productive time then this will improve our own productive time. The more our customers are working the less time will be spent fixing, complaining and escalating.
When I look at what we do at work it can be broken down into five areas: maintain; fix; supply; change and; inform. These are not the right words perhaps. I’ve used verbs as adjectives I think but that’s not the point. Whilst our business is very complex, what we are trying to do is very simple. By trying to describe what we do at work in simple terms it helps explain to our customers the role that we play.
By maintaining our technology well and by providing quality products we will be able to reduce the amount of time we spend fixing broken kit. In this way we will be able to increase the amount of time to deliver the higher value requirements of our customers.
Our real work is to move the business forward by enabling change and helping people to get the most out of the technology they have but we only get this opportunity if we can give them the confidence that their day to day work is running as smoothly as it can.
By focussing on productive time we will gain that confidence.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 
Agree Phil, but would add we need to ensure the working environment and systems are safe and secure, otherwise our customers may lose confidence. The risks need to be assessed and managed. Thanks, Paul.
Absolutley, recent history would agree with you.