The Discretionary 60% Effort

Had a fascinating Insights Discovery update day yesterday in St Michaels, Bristol Parkway, where I learned the concept of discretionary effort. 40% is the amount of effort you have to give, 60% is the amount you could give or discretionary effort. At first hand I have recently witnessed a dedicated employee who was giving a great percentage of this ‘discretionary’ effort, being mismanaged and mistreated. This resulted in this individual taking away this ‘discretionary’ effort, this will ultimately result in the organisation loosing a valuable human resource in the form of effort. This in my mind proves that good and effective management and leadership can immediately have a profound impact on productivity. Imagine if all leaders and managers were able to get that 60% extra effort, with the right training and development organisations all organisations would be able to unlock this at very little cost.