Sustainable Productivity through Regeneration

Capacity building can seem like a catchall buzzword, but understanding its essence is important to scaling mission-driven impact. Boiling it down to enhancing productivity is an oversimplification. Having the capacity to do something means being able to adequately hold the volume and velocity of a workload over extended periods of time--especially in the face of uncertainty, shocks, and stressors (i.e. resilience).

While performance management and metrics undoubtedly plays a role, on a deeper level capacity building is rooted in harnessing the qualities that make the performance possible. For example, attending a conference to gain knowledge about trends or participating in a program to adopt best practices may improve execution. But as soon as elements like burnout, confusion, or disengagement take affect, suddenly the productivity is hampered.

That’s why to me capacity building is about the application of harmonizing soft and hard skills both individually and collectively. It’s often the underlying dynamics that are taken for granted and hard to measure. I prefer to frame capacity in terms of regeneration rather productivity. Most professionals are capable of producing through sheer hard work and determination. It tends to be quite linear: input, output, outcome. While “powering through” certainly plays an important role, it’s not sustainable longterm. Where they struggle lies is regenerating the energy and effort to produce sustainably through adaptive methods, such as emergent learning. That’s where these traits above come into play to create momentum. The best part of regeneration, much like we witness in nature, is that it’s a regular cycle that ebbs and flows.