I have taught personal productivity skills for over twelve years. It is personally satisfying to see people finally understand the importance of clearing their inbox and getting clear on their next action. However, even the most productive people have to interact with those of lesser skill. Therefore, what is more important, teaching people to be productive on their own, or developing the systems that they work under?

According to Daniel Markovitz, writing for the Harvard Business Review, what the organization does is more important than individuals. In his article, Productivity Is About Your Systems, Not Your People, he argues that working on individual worker productivity alone is not going to solve the bigger problems.

The problem isn’t with the intrinsic logic of any of these approaches. It’s that they fail to account for the simple fact that most people don’t work in isolation. They work in complex organizations defined by interdependencies among people — and it’s often these interdependencies that have the greatest effect on personal productivity. You can be an email ninja, but with the explosion of email (not to mention instant messages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and countless other communication tools), you’ll never be fast enough to deal with all the incoming communication. Similarly, your personal urgent/important Eisenhower categories fall apart when the CEO asks you to do stop what you’re doing and handle something right away.

Therefore, if it is more important to work on the systems, what can an organization do to better coordinate its workflows? Markovitz provides four strategies. The first is the tiered huddle.

Many highly productive organizations have instituted a system of tiered daily huddles, with a clear escalation sequence for all problems. The first huddle, consisting of front-line workers, begins at the start of the workday. The next huddle, consisting of supervisors, follows 30 minutes later. Managers meet 30 minutes after that, followed by directors, VPs, and finally the executive team. Problems are addressed at the lowest possible level. If a decision can’t be reached, the issue is escalated to the next level. This system improves the linkage between the C-suite and the front lines; it accelerates decision making; and perhaps most importantly, it improves productivity by reducing the number of scattershot emails about a variety of problems.

Anyhow, to learn the other three strategies for improving systems, click over to read the rest of the article.

So will I stop teaching personal productivity classes because of this article?

Not a chance, because it is still very useful for employees to have GTD skills. It is another piece of the puzzle to create a successful work environment.