Productivity is often treated like a puzzle to be solved with better processes: tighter workflows, smarter tools, cleaner reporting, sharper priorities.
Those things matter. But on the Strategic Productivity course at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), one theme came through repeatedly: the biggest productivity gains are often unlocked not by redesigning the work, but by strengthening the people system that makes the work happen.
In other words: productivity is not just a technical challenge. It’s a leadership challenge.
This article shares three practical reflections from the course, particularly the emphasis on worker skills and wellbeing, and leadership and management, and how we at Ripple&Co have been leaning into that same “manager effect” through immersive, scenario-based learning.
Productivity starts with conditions, not just output
One of the most useful shifts the AMBS course encourages is to think about productivity as the result of conditions: clarity, coordination, capability, energy, trust, and sensible decision-making, especially when things get complex or pressured.
When those conditions are strong, you see it in the operational signals:
- Fewer avoidable errors and rework
- Faster problem detection and resolution
- Smoother handovers and cross-team coordination
- More consistent performance under pressure
- Better retention and fewer “silent failures” (issues that don’t surface until they’re expensive)
These aren’t "soft" outcomes. They are the day-to-day mechanics of productivity.
The overlooked lever: the relationship between managers and their teams
A second theme from the AMBS course is that productivity isn’t only shaped by systems and incentives, it’s shaped by relationships. The quality of the relationship between a manager and their team influences:
- Whether people speak up early
- Whether they flag risk or uncertainty rather than working around it
- Whether they ask for help or hide problems
- Whether they feel able to challenge, suggest improvements, or admit mistakes
- Whether they have the confidence to prioritise quality and safety over speed when it matters
When those behaviours are present, productivity improves because the organisation spends less time recovering from avoidable disruption.
When those behaviours are absent, the hidden costs show up everywhere: slow decision loops, low ownership, poor handovers, conflict avoidance, presenteeism, fatigue, and “work-as-imagined” drifting away from “work-as-done”.
The course doesn’t reduce productivity to “be nicer to people.” It makes a sharper point: leaders create the climate that determines whether people bring problems forward early, or bury them until they become an issue.
Capability beats intention: why manager development is where productivity accelerates
A third reflection is that most organisations don’t have a motivation problem. They have a capability problem.
Many managers intend to support wellbeing, communicate clearly, lead through change, and handle difficult conversations well. But under pressure, good intentions are not enough. People fall back to habit, especially in moments that are emotionally charged or time-critical:
- A team member is underperforming and defensive
- A conflict is brewing and everyone’s walking around it
- A deadline is slipping and stress is rising
- The team has become reactive and cynical
- Someone shows signs of burnout but keeps saying “I’m fine"
- A change lands badly and rumours take over
These are the moments where productivity is either protected or lost and they’re fundamentally human moments.
This is where the Strategic Productivity course is particularly valuable: it helps leaders see productivity as a multi-dimensional system, and it elevates leadership and wellbeing from "nice-to-have" to "core performance drivers". It gives people a language, a lens, and the strategic credibility to invest in the right levers.
The next question, of course, is: how do you turn that strategic insight into consistent behaviour in the real world?
Our reflection at Ripple&Co: turning the "manager effect" into practice
At Ripple&Co, our work has increasingly focused on exactly this gap: the distance between knowing what effective leadership looks like and being able to do it reliably in real moments.
Many organisations already run manager training. The issue is that much of it is still designed around concepts and content, rather than practice and behaviour change. People leave with good notes and good intentions, but not necessarily the confidence, muscle memory, or language to handle the moments that actually make (or break) performance.
That’s why we've been leaning into immersive learning because it reflects how capability is built in real life: through rehearsal, feedback, and repetition in realistic conditions.
Why immersive learning works for leader capability
Immersive learning is useful when you’re developing skills that are:
- Social and relational (not just technical)
- High-stakes in the moment
- Easy to avoid or postpone
- Affected by emotion and power dynamics
- Hard to practise safely in day-to-day work
In these areas, the learning challenge is not "Do people understand the model?" It’s "Can they use it when it counts?"
Using actors to simulate realistic workplace scenarios is one way to make that practice safe and structured. Done well, it allows leaders to:
- Try different approaches without reputational risk
- Experience what their words and tone trigger in others
- Practise staying calm when challenged
- Build confidence in boundaries and clarity
- Develop the habit of surfacing issues earlier
- Become more consistent in how they respond under pressure
This matters because consistency is what creates trust and trust is what unlocks the behaviours that protect productivity.
Talkworks is our immersive scenario-based training that uses professional actors to simulate real workplace situations for managers. It helps leaders turn the leadership-and-wellbeing levers highlighted on Strategic Productivity into day-to-day behaviour.
The part most organisations leave to chance that shapes productivity
In a world where resources are tight and expectations are rising, the organisations that pull ahead will be the ones that treat leadership capability as infrastructure: maintained, upgraded and deliberately practised - not assumed.
Most productivity gains aren’t found in dramatic transformation programmes; they’re found in the everyday moments where people decide whether to ask, tell, challenge, escalate, pause, or push on.
Improve the quality of those moments, and a surprising amount of friction disappears, replaced by smoother execution, fewer avoidable interruptions, and teams that surface issues early enough for them to be solved while they’re still small.
