> If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? This is only obviously true for rote work. For more ambiguous know

> If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? This is only obviously true for rote work. For more ambiguous knowledge work increasing task completion rate may make the company less competitive if the tasks are less aligned with the company strategy (ever seen a product became a tangled mess of half-broken features?). If you're mathemtically inclined, it's useful to model tasks as vectors adding to the company's vector of progress; the net result can be a reduction in progress if the task vector and company vector are misaligned. Anecdotally, this misalignment is the what everyone at the middle management layer and above is worried about. You get to the end of the quarter and you realize that the work team A did was misaligned with the work from team B and now their shared business goal is shot. Many people's reaction to this line of thinking is "well that's management's fault" but, as the parent correctly calls out, that's beside the point. "Just hire more competent managers" is not something you can do en masse.