March Madness and the Productivity Paradox

What better week to talk about workplace productivity! We have wall-to-wall basketball games with the NCAA Basketball tournaments going on, and one of the most requested topics from learning and development professionals is how to make people more productive. These couldn’t have aligned better because there have historically been about a thousand news stories about how much less productive we are during March Madness. That’s why this post needs to happen now!

There are some ridiculous statistics out there when it comes to workplace productivity, but none is more stupid than all the stats surrounding lost employee productivity during March Madness. And maybe this is a moot point this year anyway because we are all working from home as it is. You don’t need to worry about your boss looking over your shoulder and needing to minimize the video stream quickly. But historically, every year we’ve gotten fed the same story about lost wages and companies losing money due to people checking on their brackets and catching a few minutes of the daytime games during working hours. And we'll probably see the same stories next year as many of us go back to an office setting in 2022, but maybe, just maybe, my soapbox rant will knock some sense into someone with the power to change the narrative when it comes to employee output.

Productivity. Bosses are always seemingly trying to get their employees to be more productive, because if time is money, then the more time employees spend on a project, the more money those employees, sorry, the boss, will make.

Let me continue this rant by simply defining productivity: Productivity is commonly defined as a ratio between the output volume and the volume of inputs. In other words, it measures how efficiently production inputs, such as man hours and money, are being used. And here’s where my annoyance with productivity statistics starts. Productivity, literally, is efficiency. It’s creating the most value with the least amount of input. It has nothing to do with time spent doing something. Ok, obviously you need to spend some amount of time on a project in order to produce a high-quality product at the end, but if you are truly productive, be definition you actually should be spending less time on the project in order to produce the same level of quality as others who spend more time. You want to be efficient, not just busy.

But look at any article or news stories about March Madness and lost workplace productivity, and what is highlighted? Hours of work lost to watching basketball games and filling out brackets. I mean you really want to get into the weeds of how this really is Madness? The company that produces these statistics puts an hourly wage on every employee in America, then subtracts a certain amount of money per person in order to come up with total quote, unquote “lost wages” during the tournament.

What?! That doesn’t even begin to make sense. Where’s the comparison to how much people are on their phones in other times of the year? How about looking at quarterly earnings of companies that includes March? If this were a real productivity drain, then wouldn’t companies always include it in their investor reports and say something like, "Well, as you know, March is always tough because we lose so much productivity due to basketball games?" No, that’s crazy.

Now, if you want to talk about lost productivity due to parents being stuck at home with their kids and school plus a full-time job to take care of, by all means study those trends. I bet there’s some real challenges that show up because of what we’ve all been through in the past year. But a few hours of lunchroom conversation about 15-2 upsets and watching some highlights on your phone? Give me a break.

But how does anyone improve the product without being too focused on minute-to-minute productivity? It’s not easy, but it is a simple concept. You need to move from a productivity focus to a process focus.

By process I mean the environment you set up that allows better productivity to happen organically. An environment that motivates people to put in the necessary work to create a world class product. That type of environment has 3 common factors across any industry: Autonomy, Connectedness, and Mastery. That means that people will be motivated to produce a better product if they get to choose how they best work, if they’re connected to a team or common goal, and if they can see how they’re improving at a skill or task. These factors, which add up to something called self-determination, have been studied in hundreds if not thousands of experiments by more than just a company trying to get media attention.

And here’s the irony with March Madness, people take hold of their schedule MORE and plan around some basketball watching, people connect more through chatting about the games, and people get to practice time management skills in order to still get all required work done in a specific window. In other words, the March Madness environment could in fact INCREASE productivity and motivation!

I know this assumes a certain level of time management skills, and it’s not like the manager should suggest everyone bet their month’s salary in an office pool, but my point here is that if we are trying to improve productivity, measuring every minute that someone is working on their job takes away all sense of autonomy, destroys connectedness, and makes people feel like the goal is to get something done, not to master the process so that it can be improved over time. There can be no self-determination in this type of environment, and the product will suffer.

On the other hand, if we shift our focus to the process of what we are trying to build and create a climate where motivation, teamwork, and feelings of getting better are top of mind, then those we work with will run through walls to create a great product.

Some people might think I’m crazy here, and that’s ok, you can’t please everyone, but you know what I think could be the most sane, rational choice ever?

Make every month March Madness.