Efficiency or Effectiveness: and the winner is …

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“Why can’t you get this right the first time? You end up wasting time and resources in doing it correctly the subsequent time.” Sounds familiar! Most of us would have come across such a statement or its modified version, with similar purport, either in our personal or professional life. This simple and innocuous statement has much depth and meaning to it.

Let’s take a step back and have a wider perspective. There are so many changes happening around us and at such a fast pace that keeping a tab on information flowing around is a challenging task. “The one who is quick enough to join the dots together is the one who wins the race”, is the oft heard comment. Increasingly, professionals across streams are expected to be quick. One point of view is “…it’s better to be quick and first rather be cent percent correct”. While one strives to walk this path, the other sounds doing the corridor rounds are “Let’s do this right the first time itself. We don’t have resources to waste and certainly not time to do it the second time. No retakes.”

A particular regimen repeated over a period of time gets perfected. The mental faculties get acclimatised and are better suited to comprehend the various environmental factors at play while achieving the tasks. In the process, we become quicker, use fewer resources and increasingly become specialized.

But a peculiar situation arises when we are faced with a task for the first time. We do not have any past experience in handling such a situation. One of the tough choices to make is whether to do right / partially right but quickly or take appropriate time in completing the task correctly the first instance.

The choice is increasingly between “doing things right” (efficiency) and “doing right things” (effectiveness) or is there a choice at all? The current scenarios are such that companies are increasingly demanding both and simultaneously. The resources are scarce and costly so can’t be wasted. The time to arrive at solutions / implement it is under pressure and getting reduced. The brief is simple – “Do the right things and do them right…first time and every time”.

Efficiency and effectiveness increasingly resemble two sides of the same coin. A coin which has heads / tails on both sides is regarded as an ineligible currency – defunct. Pursuit of any one, efficiency or effectiveness, increasingly leads to a scenario of the output being defunct, unacceptable to the customers.

Being ‘effective efficiently and efficiently effective’ seems to be the way ahead.

By: Sumit Singh
Dated: 28 Oct’12

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