What is Productivity without Sacrifice?
Productivity without Sacrifice (PWS) is an evidence informed approach to work that helps organisations and their people to become more productive and effective at what they do whilst still maintaining wellbeing and balance in their lives.
PWS focusses on three areas: Efficiency, Balance and Reward
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Efficiency - brain friendly tools, techniques and knowledge to help you to be more productive, getting more done in less time. There are hundreds of ways to improve your efficiency. The PWS framework organises these under four headings:​
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Planning and organising your workload
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Managing your mind at work
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Increasing your self awareness
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Improving your self management
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Are you working long hours? Do you want to get more done in less time? Adopting the right efficiency tools can help you to thrive in your career and progress whilst maintaining balance and wellbeing.
Balance - Getting the balance right for you in two dimensions: Work-Life balance and taking care of your health and wellbeing. What constitutes the right balance varies dramatically from person to person.
A young, healthy, fit person keen to climb the career ladder, who really enjoys work and has few obligations outside work might find a 70/30 split in favour of work to be right for them at that moment.
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A working mother with young children might favour a 50/50, 40/60 or 60/40 split. There is no definitive right balance point - it depends on many factors and will vary from person to person and over time.
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What constitutes 'Wellbeing' will also vary dramatically from person to person. For some people there will be a focus on health and fitness, for others a focus on calving out time for things like meditation, hobbies, time with family etc.
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What constitutes balance and wellbeing is heavily influenced by a individuals purpose. If people are doing things that feel important because they are aligned with their purpose and values, hard work and long hours can feel nourishing and energising.
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Is your life work balance right for you?
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Reward - To be fully productive and happy at work, work needs to feel 'rewarding'. If your salary is fair, and your earnings are sufficient, other elements of reward can become important. You could feel rewarded for doing work that feels purposeful and important. You can feel rewarded by gaining professional recognition. Reward can also include opportunities for development and growth. A great office in a great location working with a great team further adds to a feeling of work feeling rewarding.
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Is your work rewarding enough? What would make it feel more rewarding?
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How does PWS fits into organisational development and leadership thinking?
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For nearly 100 years Left brain logical thinking has dominated the way we structure organisations and lead employees. The influence of Right brain creative thinking is starting to have an impact. And on the distant horizon is a balance of left brain logic and right brain creativity. We are shifting from Thinking towards Knowing.
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We are shifting towards more holistic organisational structures that understand their role in local communities, the country as a whole and the world.
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We are shifting towards people management that encourages shared prosperity and world betterment.
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We are shifting towards leadership strategies that see the beyond the constraints of organisational walls
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Adopting a PWS approach to organisational design and working practices will ensure our organisations and people thrive as we move forward. It will help us to eventually achieve shared prosperity and equanimity. In the here and now it is designed to help organisations and busy professionals to stay ahead of the game by increasing clarity and focus whilst maintaining long term balance and wellbeing.
For many, PWS may be aspirational – a new concept yet to become embedded in conventional organisational practices, but its alive already and out there improving efficiency, promoting balance and making work feel more rewarding.
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See PWS Bulletin #4 below for an example of PWS in action.
28/2/2025
PWS Bulletin 6
Are Smart objectives Smart or dumb?
Am I deluded? Have I wasted my career on something that isn’t fit for purpose? Almost as soon as I completed my master’s degree in training and performance management, I discovered that traditional performance management systems and processes are not fit for purpose.
14/2/2025
PWS Bulletin 5
Is your leadership style outdated?
Have you ever felt uninspired, unappreciated, or disengaged at work? The probable cause? lousy leadership.
Research gathered from 4500 employees in the UK concluded that 73% of the UK workforce think that their manager is ineffective. 50% of these employees plan to leave their company in the next year. As a leader what can you do about this? Continue reading...
31/1/2025
PWS Bulletin 4
How to future proof your career
Sitting at my desk today, looking out of the window I saw a woman walking her dog in the field opposite my house. I know this woman. She works for a well-known financial multi-national with offices all over the world. As the dog played in the field, she was in deep conversation on her mobile phone. ​Continue reading.....
17/1/25
PWS Bulletin 3
Time for a fresh start?
This is not the newsletter that I had planned to write. I had just finished writing Newsletter 3 when a Facebook notification popped up. I normally ignore these notifications, but I am glad I did not. I discovered that a friend, Professor Jeremy Hunter had lost his home in the LA fires.
On the 9th January he wrote on Facebook “It’s all gone. Like so many of our neighbors, it’s all gone.”
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2/1/2025
PWS Bulletin 2
Using your mindset to conquer adversity
Can you imagine how you would feel if you suddenly and unexpectedly lost your partner? Your home? Your business? A close friend of mine lost all three at once.
Her husband died suddenly in a freak workplace accident in late 2024. For various reasons it was no longer safe for her to live and work on the site where she operated her business from. Her life savings had been invested in a second business that her husband ran on the same site, leaving her with no money. Her husband had been a true soul mate in every way. She was utterly devastated.
20/12/2024
PWS Bulletin 1
Three words that changed my life
On a fresh and bright September day I stood overlooking the sea at Old Hunstanton in Norfolk.
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I had recently returned from a five-week sabbatical working on a cruise ship doing something completely different. I had been teaching art on a cruise ship travelling around Iceland, Norway and the Med.
Read more...
PWS Case studies
February 2025
We are in the process of writing up case studies about individuals and organisations who have adopted a PWS approach to work. Please bookmark this page and revisit it shortly.
