Yesterday a coworker asked a great question: “Quick Poll: What do you think is the most valuable productivity goal in terms of employee-to-employer contribution — A) units of profitable new ideas per employee, B) units of work per hour, C) both, or D) something else?”

My answer? None of the above. I’m not sure yet what would be better, though. And here’s why: current corporate structure and measurement is essentially based on Henry Ford’s “they can have any color they want, as long as it’s black” assembly line process innovation, where manual laborers were interchangeable. That still basically works in a physical labor/manufacturing setting. Maybe. But, according to “the Support Economy,” people are now looking for “psychological self-determination.” We want something other than a black Model T now. Also, good chunk of our economy is now built around “knowledge workers,” who are significantly less interchangeable. That framework is self-limiting.

People (employees and consumers) are forced into a box. That box doesn’t recognize or capitalize on the parts of the person outside the box. We need a new paradigm. IDEO calls it looking for “T-Shaped people.” David Armano, from Critical Mass, calls it the “Fuzzy Tail.”

We need something less like a Rubik’s Cube, and more like Flubber. Once we have the structure, then we can measure.

What do you think?