How to Improve Business Productivity: A Human-Centred Approach for Fast-Growing Teams
If you Google “how to improve business productivity” you’ll see a stack of recommendations promoting everything from technology to project management software.
Many business owners treat productivity as a delivery issue. They focus on output speed while overlooking the foundational structures that make efficiency possible in the first place. Until those are addressed, no amount of optimisation will move the needle where it counts.
Let’s first start with reinforcing that business productivity isn’t a tech stack problem. It’s a leadership one.
As organisations scale quickly, the cracks usually show up in the numbers first - they show up in the meetings that overrun, the decisions that stall, the confusion about who's doing what. Productivity slows down not because your people aren’t working hard enough, but because the systems, expectations, and behaviours around them haven’t kept pace.
I’ve worked with high-growth teams from NHS leadership to corporate boardrooms, and the same themes repeat: smart people stuck in inefficient structures. So, before you throw another tool at the problem (and wonder why that expensive project management software didn’t solve your problems), here are 10 strategies to help your business work smarter (not harder) by addressing the real human levers of productivity.
Redefine productivity beyond output
We often measure productivity by how much gets done but that metric misses the point. High-performing businesses aligned, clear, and consistent - they aren’t just busy.
True productivity is when:
People know what matters most
They have the autonomy to act
Progress is visible
If your teams are working flat-out but key priorities keep slipping, you don’t have a motivation issue. Your teams need more clarity (not another ten priorities).
Rebuild clarity at scale
The fastest way to lose productivity during growth? Let everyone assume.
When your business was small, alignment happened naturally because you were all in the same room, solving problems together. As you scale, assumptions multiply and ambiguity becomes your biggest time thief.
Revisit your roles, responsibilities, and decision rights. Map them. Share them. Then reinforce them in meetings, one-to-ones and hiring processes. Productivity starts with knowing who owns what.
Don’t skip the leadership development
Scaling a business without scaling your leadership is like upgrading your car’s engine without touching the brakes.
Many organisations invest heavily in senior leadership but middle managers are the ones translating strategy into action. If they’re under-skilled, under-supported, or unclear, you’ll feel it everywhere.
Develop your managers to be leaders. A manager in a leadership role is still just a manager. You do this through real-time coaching, feedback tools, and scenario-based learning. If they can lead better conversations, they’ll unlock better results.
Make one-to-ones a performance tool, not a tick-box
A well-run one-to-one is a goldmine for surfacing blockers, misalignment, and burnout before they derail delivery but most are either skipped or reduced to project updates.
Structure yours around three questions:
Where is your time going?
What’s getting in the way?
What would help you move faster?
You’ll get more insight from that than a dozen dashboards.
Audit your decision-making process
If every decision is still going through the top, your productivity problem is structural. Build a system where decisions are:
Made at the right level
Backed by principles, not just precedence
Reviewed, not micromanaged
Think of this less about losing control, it’s actually more about trusting your people to act and equipping them to do so well.
Get honest about what’s not working
High-growth businesses often delay hard conversations in favour of harmony. The reality is the longer you avoid friction, the more costly it becomes.
Your people know where the gaps are. Ask them. Listen without defensiveness and act visibly. You’ll gain credibility and surface efficiency ideas no consultant could spot from the outside.
Automate with purpose, not panic
Depending on what search result you clicked before this article - yes automations can boost productivity but you can’t automate chaos. Before you implement any technology - ask yourself:
What’s the underlying problem this solves?
Is this task standardised and repeatable?
Will this remove friction or just hide it?
Good automation frees up human thinking. Bad automation just buries bad processes.
Normalise feedback, not just performance reviews
A productive culture is one where feedback isn’t annual. It’s habitual. It’s the Monday morning shout-outs, it happens the team all-hands. Or (if it’s not great feedback) it happens in everyday conversations without blame or defensiveness.
Train teams to give feedback early, clearly and constructively. Reward it. Model it at leadership levels. Productivity rises when people know what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve in real time, not retrospectively.
Treat burnout as a system warning, not an individual flaw
Burnout isn’t a resilience issue. If your top performers are burning out, it’s a signal to you that your systems, expectations or leadership norms need recalibrating.
At this point you should be reviewing workloads, questioning urgency, monitoring priorities and creating slack in the system for deep work. Productive teams don’t sprint, they sustain.
Track behaviours, not just numbers
It’s tempting to measure productivity through KPIs alone but output doesn’t tell you how it was achieved.
Build behavioural metrics into your reviews: collaboration, ownership, responsiveness, problem-solving. These are the signals of scalable success and the habits that keep businesses efficient as they grow.
Finally, Productivity Starts With How You Lead
Productivity is the result of what your culture encourages, your managers enable, and your systems allow.
When you design a business that removes friction, supports focus, and builds capability at every level - productivity takes care of itself.
If you’re a founder, director or HR lead in a fast-scaling business and you’re ready to diagnose what’s really slowing you down, let’s talk.