Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Success: Effectiveness and Efficiency


For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/; it's the Management Encyclopedia at one single site

For more articles, blogs and knols of Shyam Bhatawdekar, refer: (Home Page for Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar) http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com/

In earlier posts, I mentioned that it is possible to achieve a great degree of success in each of the many important aspects of life and thereby feel fully successful in life. But to achieve it within the limited resources that one normally has, one has to deploy them in a “balanced” manner and learn to become more effective as well as efficient.

I am giving a complete road map to do so. The first step is to understand difference between effectiveness and efficiency.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

First try to a get a clarity on what is effectiveness and what is efficiency.

Effectiveness is all about the answer to “what”. What is it that I wish to achieve? What are my goals? What are my destinations? Therefore, what is it that I wish to do?

Efficiency is all about the answer to “how”. How well, how fast and how economically or productively am I doing the tasks or activities that will help me reach my goals or destinations?

Obviously effectiveness comes first. If you do not know your destination how can you decide the direction in which you should proceed and the path you should tread on. But in over zealousness of achieving the goals which are still hazy to you, in the fastest possible way, you may still start running instead of walking. However, you are most likely to start off and keep running in a wrong direction because your destination is still not well defined; it is still quite hazy. You will keep moving forward to a destination which is really not yours, much faster. And that is a mistake.

What is the big use? You are making a mistake. You are efficient, no doubt but you are efficient in making the mistakes. The lesson to learn is: without effectiveness, efficiency has no much use. Efficiency without effectiveness makes you to commit the mistakes only faster.

So, do not start off without answering the first question “what”. And even if you start off without answering the question “what” and somehow realize half way through that you are not reaching your goals or destinations despite being very efficient, stop and remind: have you answered the question “what” before taking off? Pause, take your time and answer “what”, get clarity on your goals and destinations and the related tasks that need to be accomplished. Then. carry out the mid course correction of the direction in which you had earlier started off and now start treading the new correct path with great efficiency.

You may also like to refer: (Effectiveness and Efficiency) http://effectiveness-efficiency.blogspot.com/ or http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com

(Also refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)