Efficiency versus effectiveness
Is it better to maximize every single second of your life, filling it with activity, or is it better to occasionally to do things in a less structured manner where you achieve big things? And does today’s technology, which brings more efficiency tools than we can possibly conceive, really lead us to achieve great things?
Two key terms that I learned while studying for my business degree were efficiency and effectiveness.
Efficiency is a measurement of your results in relation to the work and materials your use to get your results.
Getting the same results with less work and materials normally equates to an increase in efficiency. There’s a heck of a lot of interest out there in efficiency.
Image by sara.atkins
Effectiveness is a measurement of how successful you are in achieving your goals: did your hard work lead to the desired result.
Does your work, your use of time, and use of materials lead you to accomplish your goal? If so, then you are effective in accomplishing that goal.
There are plenty of rewards for being effective.
Image by jonrawlinson
Which is better – efficiency or effectiveness?
I’d far rather be effective than efficient. I’d rather know that my efforts, however imbalanced, were accomplishing what needed to be accomplished, rather than maximizing the output of every single activity.
A lot of software/Web applications seem to be focusing on efficiency: doing more with less.
But are they making us more effective? Can they?
What do you think?
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hypotheek:
I rather be effective… you can hire efficient people, but an effective project is worth much more
Regards,
Aislin
18 August 2008, 3:02 amMark Dykeman:
@Hypotheek – agreed!
18 August 2008, 4:38 amUrs E. Gattiker:
Mark, nice post.
Let me just emphasize that your definition of effectiveness should probably be slightly altered.
It is not about reaching your goals but, instead, setting the right goals in the first place and then reaching them, of course.
To illustrate, if you want to produce 100 bikes with 3-gears each, you might reach that goal quite efficiently. Question is: who wants to purchase such a bike these days when 18-gears or more are becoming part of the standard offering. So producing efficiently something the market wants at a competitive price (i.e. value for money) is critical.
Keep up the great work. I just entered your blog into our database to be able to benchmark it against others in our database at http://My.ComMetrics.com
So you and I can see how efficient and effective you are when it comes to blogging
Wish you a sunny and effective day.
18 August 2008, 1:41 pmMark Dykeman:
Fair point, Urs: effectiveness depends on achieving the right goals.
18 August 2008, 2:26 pmSEO, SEM, SMM - audience building and findability are important, unfortunately | Broadcasting Brain:
[...] keeping with the theme of efficiency and effectiveness from my last post, I have some comparisons of different methods to promote your work, as seen through lenses of [...]
18 August 2008, 8:34 pmEffective and efficient marketing x.x - resistance is futile:
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19 August 2008, 1:39 amAre you a sequential or random-access doer? | Broadcasting Brain:
[...] It’s not always the most efficient way to get things done, but it’s effective for me (I tend to be more biased to effectiveness than efficiency). [...]
24 September 2008, 9:05 amSunglasses:
Well i would prefer to be effective while being efficient as well because sometimes efficiency can't be trusted for better results. However, effectiveness is a must.
24 May 2009, 10:41 am