Word: graysons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Price rises will slow down if America can get a larger output of goods and services from the same input of labor, capital and energy. Searching for ways to do so, Grayson, 54, a hyperproductive fellow who gets up at 4:30 a.m., started the nonprofit American Productivity Center at Houston. In all, 125 companies have kicked in their support, and every time Grayson gets a check in the mail, he gleefully clangs a bronze bell hanging in his office. At their center, which has few walls and many open doors, he and a small staff try to discover what...
Managers are mystified by the slowdown, and they, like Grayson, put the rap on Government regulations and those labor leaders who equate productivity drives with speedup and exploitation. But there is blame aplenty for managers as well, says Grayson. Too many are overly concerned with short-term profits, on which their bonuses and stock options are based. With inflation, regulation and high taxes all biting into today's earnings, managers put off investing in machines that would raise tomorrow's productivity...
...Grayson has been startled at how little companies have done to measure their own productivity, let alone improve it. "They have paid much more attention to finance, marketing, mergers and tax manipulation," says he. Few production men have risen to the top in modern business; the accountants reign in the executive aeries. The business schools and their brightly minted M.B.A.s sense the trend and pay scant attention to productivity, Grayson observes. "Hardly any courses are given in production and efficiency...
...Grayson disputes the conventional wisdom that productivity has been hurt by social change. The surge of women, nonwhites and the young into the job market has not had much impact, in his view. C. Jackson Grayson Jr. "I've heard all the rhetoric about we-don't-want-to-work-hard-any-more, and I don't believe it. The work ethic has not been lost. What has happened is that autocratic, bureaucratic organizations in business and public service have suppressed the desires and ability of the individual to feel that he or she is contributing. People...
...raise productivity, Grayson argues, is for companies to give everybody the three R's: recognition, responsibility and rewards. Recognition in the form of plaques and photos on the wall, company dinners and other visible backpats for imaginative, high-output workers. Responsibility through allowing individual initiative to ride high, including breaking up long production lines and impersonal offices into teams of workers who choose their own leaders and decide for themselves how to get the job done. Rewards by means of bonuses of cash or time off-or both...