Are you effective or efficient?
In Peter Drucker’s book “The Effective Executive” he defines effectiveness and efficiency as follows:
- Effectiveness: Doing the right things
- Efficiency**: Doing things right
Let’s look at the four different options for our work:
Not effective and not efficient Slowly working on something that is not useful
Not effective and efficient Quickly working on something that is not useful
Effective and not efficient Slowly working on something that is useful
Effective and efficient Quickly working on something that is useful
Becoming more efficient is a task in improving productivity and becoming lean (removing waste). The outcome is known, the problem is how to get there as quickly as possible.
Becoming more effective is more complex, it involves the regular creation of the”most important goal”, communicating this goal, and putting aside everything else. It is about deciding what not to do as much as what to do.