Let’s imagine that in an effort to reduce your household expenses, you decided to cancel your Internet access for a year. What do you think will happen? Think about how much time you and your family spend on the Internet. Not just playing games and fooling around, but keeping in touch with family and friends, working, studying, reading, learning, etc.

Now imagine you had no Internet access for one year. How out of touch would you be with what is going on in the world? Would your children fail in school? Would you become “deadwood” floating around with no direction?

Here is a riddle for you: We are in the middle of the worst global financial crisis ever and YET a key economic statistic – productivity, defined as output per worker hour – seems to be sailing along without a worry. In September, U.S. productivity was up 6.6%, the highest in six years. History tells us that strong productivity numbers should bring an economic boom. On the other hand, massive economic disruptions are typically accompanied by weak or negative productivity growth.

So, why are we blessed with the unlikely combination of deep recession and increased productivity? Many of you will have the right answer: companies have cut costs by cutting workforce headcount or workforce hours. But what type of jobs have been cut?

The biggest cuts in budgets we have seen are in three major areas: 1) Marketing; 2) R&D and Quality; 3) and Training and Development. Why? First, it’s very hard to measure the immediate impact of these functions on the business and recovery, and second, most executives think they can live live without these functions for awhile until business recovers.

What is the result of cutting Marketing, R&D and Quality, and Training and Development for a year or more? I think just like cutting your internet bill, many companies are losing out. They are losing market share, talent and sustainability. They are turning into deadwood.

In our humble effort to reduce the deadwood effect in the Middle East, we are offering free access to our Online Knowledge Library (if you still have the Internet to access it). Enjoy it while your company thinks through which budget to cut next year.