UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAJES Y ESTUDIOS SOCIO-CULTURALES

READING WORKSHOP 1

Name:

______________________________________________________________

Final Exam

The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

The way most of us work isnt working. Study after study has shown that companies are
experiencing a great employee engagement crisis. A 2007 Towers Perrin survey of nearly 90,000
employees worldwide, for instance, found that only 21% felt fully engaged at work and nearly 40% were
disenchanted or disengaged. That negativity has a direct impact on the bottom line. Towers Perrin found
that companies with very low level employee engagement policies had a 33% annual decline in operating
income and an 11% annual decline in earnings growth. Those with high employee engagement levels, on
the other hand, reported a 19% increase in operating income and 28% growth in earnings per share.
Nearly a decade ago, the Energy Project, the company I head, began to address work
performance and the problem of employee disengagement. We believed that burnout was one of its
leading causes, and we focused almost exclusively on helping individuals avoid it by managing their
energy, as opposed to their time. Time, after all, is finite. By contrast, you can expand your personal
energy and also regularly renew it.
Once people understand how their supply of available energy is influenced by the choices they
make, they can learn new strategies that increase the fuel in their tanks and boost their productivity.
(1)__________ people define precise times at which to do highly specific activities, these new behaviors
eventually become automatic (2) __________ no longer require conscious will and discipline. We refer
to them as rituals. Theyre simple (3) __________ powerful. They include practices (4) __________
shutting down your e-mail for a couple of hours during the day, so you can tackle important or complex
tasks without distracting interruptions, or taking a daily 3 PM walk to get an emotional and mental
breather.
What we failed to fully appreciate in our early work was that once we finished our sessions with
employees and sent them back into the workplace, they often ran into powerful organizational resistance
to the very principles and practices wed taught them. We still believe that enduring organizational
change is possible only if individuals alter their attitudes and behaviors first. But weve come to
understand that its not possible to generate lasting cultural change without deeply involving an
organizations senior leadership.
In this article well describe the transformation we helped initiate at Sony Pictures
Entertainment, a company that has embraced energy-building and -renewing rituals at all levels. Based in
Culver City, California, Sony Pictures produces, markets, and distributes movies and TV shows. So far,
more than 3,000 of the companys 6,300 employees worldwide have gone through our energymanagement program this summer well reach another 1,700 in Europe, Singapore, and Latin America.
To date, the reaction to the program has been overwhelmingly positive. Eighty-eight percent of
participants say it has made them more focused and productive. More than 90% say it has helped them
bring more energy to work every day. Eighty-four percent say they feel better able to manage their jobs
demands and are more engaged at work. Sonys leaders believe that these changes have helped boost the
companys performance. Despite the recession, Sony Pictures had its most profitable year ever in 2008

and one of its highest revenue years in 2009 (though an industrywide collapse in DVD sales forced the
company to do a round of layoffs early in 2010).
The Energy Project
7.

As we have done at many other organizations we encouraged Sony to make two fundamental
shifts in the way it manages employees. The first was to stop expecting people to operate like
computersat high speeds, continuously, running multiple programs at the same timeand to recognize
that human beings perform best and are most productive when they alternate between periods of intense
focus and intermittent renewal. The second was to move from trying to get more out of employees and
instead to invest in systematically meeting their four core needs, so theyre fueled and inspired to bring
more of themselves to work every day. These four core needs are physical health (achieved through
nutrition, sleep, daytime renewal, and exercise), emotional well-being (which grows out of feeling
appreciated and valued), mental clarity (the ability to focus intensely, prioritize, and think creatively),
and spiritual significance (which comes from the feeling of serving a mission beyond generating a
profit).
Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
Written By
Tony Schwartz (tony@theenergyproject.com) is the president and CEO of the Energy Project and the
author of The Way Were Working Isnt Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great
Performance (The Free Press, 2010), written with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy.

UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAJES Y ESTUDIOS SOCIO-CULTURALES
READING WORKSHOP 2
Name:

_____________________________________________________________

Final Exam

Based on the text above, carry out the following activities:

A. Establishing References. Identify the following referents in the text:
1. Those ( P1) __________________________________________
2. It ( P2) ______________________________________________
3. They (P3) _________________________________________
4. Them (P4 )___________________________________________
5. It (P5) ______________________________________________
B. Identifying Noun-modification groups. Fill in the following chart with modification groups
from the text. One example in each box is enough.
Words

Paragraph

Modification group

Translation into Spanish

3
4
5
6

D. Recognizing relations. Choose the best connector from each list in order to complete the blank
spaces in paragraph 3.
1. a. If

b. In exchange for

c. On the contrary

2. a. also

b. and

c. neither

3. a. but

b. or

c. because

4. a. such as

b. however

c. until

E. Understanding the communicative function of verbs. What is the communicative function of

the following verb tenses? Choose the correct option.
1. well describe (par. 5, line 1)
a. An action or situation completed in the past.
b. An action or situation that started in the past and continues to the present.
c. An action or situation that is going to happen.
2. Sony Pictures had (par. 6, line 5)
a. An action or situation completed in the past.
d. An action or situation was expected to happen.
e. An action or situation that is going to happen.
3. we have done (par. 7, line 1)
a. An action or situation completed in the past.
b. An action or situation constant in time.
c. An action or situation that started in the past and continues to the present.
4. needs are (par. 7, line 7)
a. An action or situation completed in the past.
b. An action or situation constant in time.
c. An action or situation that started in the past and continues to the present.

F. Recognizing the truth value of ideas. Choose the correct truth value for the following sentences
from paragraph 1.
1. The way most of us work is not working.
a. Opinion
b. Evidence
c. Negation
2. Study after study has shown that companies are experiencing a great employee engagement
crisis.
a. Assertion
b. Fact
c. Possibility
3.

That negativity has a direct impact on the bottom line.

a. Evidence
b. Assertion
c. Advice

G. Main Ideas. . Identify the paragraphs where you find the following ideas. Write the number of
the paragraph on the lines provided
1. Changes a company has to make. _____
2. Companies with low-level worker commitment strategies have a decrease in their
income. _____
3. Optimistic response to change in a companys program._____
4. Cultural change is possible if everybody in the company participates in it. _____
H. Summary. Choose the best idea that summarizes the text.
1. A company achieves productivity by asking employees to do as many tasks as possible.
A company achieves productivity by integrating its employees into the organizational
culture.
2. A company achieves productivity by requiring few focused tasks from their employees.