Post written by Marlon Ribunal.
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Act after having made assessments. The one who first knows the far and near wins – this is the rule of armed struggle.

Sun Tzu, in The Art of War

I want to give this post a subtitle: “The 5 R’s Of Getting Back To The Productive Stance“. But before I move on, I ask you to read “Let’s Talk About Innovation” and understand the importance of the individual as the source of renewal. The individual, or employee, has an important role in whichever direction the company goes. He or she has an impact to the company’s course although it may not be as great or direct as huge profits or economic meltdown.

An individual’s meltdown in productivity, on the other hand, will certainly have an adverse impact to his co-workers, superiors, and family. When an employee lags productivity-wise,  that will surely be felt immediately. His or her performance metrics will plummet and that pulls everything down south. The worst that could happen is it will cost him or her job. A bad performance can impact you greatly, albeit negatively.

There might be a time that you suddenly feel that your performance is not meeting the expectations; and, you might suddenly realize that you are already on the pit of non-productivity. Everything could go wrong. First your performance takes a hit, the next thing you know you’re in front of your supervisor trying to make sense. As you have great successes and productivity performance spikes, you have your shares of let downs. When your productivity plunges, you become vulnerable inside out. The 5 R’s Of Getting Back To The Productive Stance will give you the idea of how to get back to your true form – the productive form.

Reflect

This is the first thing you need to do – reflect. This is not the time to blame your circumstances. You don’t go running and searching for the exit. You just want to stay still and look within. Void yourself of your emotions and try your best to free it from distractions. Unleash the load and everything that is within. Do nothing for a moment. Think nothing for a moment. Reach for that nothingness within and embrace it.

Review

After the exercise of reflection, which might take few moments or hours, start to qualify the situation. Start with the tangibles – metrics, output statistics, lists, and other form of measurements that make determination of your negative performance. Then you ask yourself, “What are these numbers telling me”? Obviously the numbers will show a descent but make a mental note about when it started to go down. Then put that note in parallel with your attitude, behavior, experiences, and actions around the same time your performance went down. Can you see correlations?

Reassess

Once you have the numbers and finished with the review, you should have a decent answer to “What went wrong?” You should be able to draw the correlations between the numbers and your experiences and events that surrounded them. Maybe you’re going through some personal changes or some adversity that had a negative effect on the way you worked. Personal conditions inside and outside of work can alter our views and actions toward our work. So it is very important to consider these when reassessing things out. Or maybe, there was an abrupt change at work that coincided with your performance getting sour. Maybe you can take a look into that as well. Or maybe you need to go back and review your tools and ask yourself, “Are my tools effective and still relevant to what I am doing?” Before you leave the reassessment stage, make sure that you have the answers.

Refocus

It’s time to refocus. Sharpen your battle gears. Get ready to go to the battlefield. Build within yourself the sense of urgency. You have to turn around now. Not tomorrow. Not the day after that. Now or it might be too late. There might be no need to rewrite your goals. The goals are still the same – become successful. Rekindle the passion. Just do it.

Recommit

Put your worth on the scale. Yes, you are important. This is the reason why I asked you at the beginning of this post to go back to my previous article about innovation and renewal. You have to make commitment with yourself. Renewal starts with you – either you want it or you don’t. The only thing that stands between you and your goals is you. You may not have control over the past or have the power to undo the negative metrics against your performance but you can definitely change your behavior going forward.

You need a renewed commitment and a deep sense of urgency to go back to your productive form. These five phases can show you how to get there. You have to aspire for Renewal. If you are like most people, you probably have experienced the productivity pit. What have you done to dig yourself out of it?