Effectiveness vs. Efficiency: Which Is More Important?

The desire to make profit drives companies to operate with high efficiency. It is important that you do your best at work using the least amount of time, money and resources.

For this reason, in most corporate cultures there is a pressure to achieve efficiency, and the problem is that efficiency is often achieved at the expense of effectiveness, and the truth is that effectiveness is much more important than efficiency.

According to diffen.com, effectiveness means doing the right task, completing activities, and achieving goals. Competence relates to doing things in an optimal way, for example:

Do it in the fastest or least costly way. We all need to be efficient; But efficiency is at its best when it contributes to effectiveness.

Peter Drucker, in his book The Effective Executive, says: "Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources; but only potency can turn them into results."

Comparing Effectiveness with Efficiency

The following points explain why effectiveness is more important than efficiency:

The real problem with Efficiency

The main problem with putting efficiency ahead of effectiveness is that some people end up wanting to do things quickly and perfectly, before they start doing them at all. This of course leads to some problems.

And you'll often see people procrastinating, trying to finish small details, or taking a long time to get things started when they're trying to be effective before they're efficient, and there's some irony here, and what happens is:

They will start doing something, realize that the path they have chosen is too slow, then move on to another process, and the end effect is inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

Sometimes, it's better to take a chance and do something slowly but in proven ways than to try to make it more efficient at first. Another common symptom is that people are stuck in an endless learning cycle, absorbing and gathering information to do things effectively, instead of trying them first.

There are some ways to overcome this tendency and strike a balance between effectiveness and efficiency.

Real Objective of Efficiency

There is a difference between being busy and being productive, for example:

A person might be very efficient at stacking boxes, maybe someone could stack 1,000 boxes an hour. They do things right; however, if the company's job is to unpack and tidy up boxes, all that efficiency gets lost in the wrong activity.

One person may do more work in less time, but what is the real value if they are doing the wrong things? The real goal of efficiency is to be effective at doing the right things.

How to be Effective and Efficient?

1. Start doing something and then improve upon it

As mentioned above, the biggest problem with putting efficiency ahead of effectiveness is that most people never start with the task, end up looking for better ways to do it, and not going anywhere else.

The best approach is to learn as you do and iterate, the idea being that you can't write down a recipe until you try it. Try it first, write it down, then repeat until you get better at cooking it and get it right. Which we describe as effective. There is no way you can understand everything about a task or a process until you try it.

Now, there is an exception to that. Some people have the ability to run simulations in their minds, and relate what they're thinking to the real world. I'm certainly not one of those people, and if you were, you'd already be working among the geniuses in a secret government facility somewhere.

2. Find the Balance between Effectiveness and Efficiency

We like to do things quickly and well, but there are also times when getting to the bottom is more important than doing it the right way.

A good balance between effectiveness and efficiency is required:

When you do something for the first time, like learning a new skill, do it the way people who have already done it recommend it first, and when you try their method, you can go back and try to find or modify a more effective method.

There are a lot of people trying to learn internet marketing, and what they do is they keep reading and searching for "better ways"; That is, efficiency, when they really should try one method first, test the results, and then improve.

3. Stop Procrastinating

Common examples where you can procrastinate and get analysis paralysis:

To start a big personal project, just start with one small task and don't stress about doing it effectively. Then set standard operating procedures. Any documentation and regulations before you attempt to do so.

There are many instances where this can appear, anytime you do something for the first time, look for it and don't struggle to do it efficiently, for example:

When you first want to learn to row, don't worry about proficiency, just row and get good at it, and when you love rowing and keep doing it, you will become a more efficient rower.

So use this approach for anything in life and you will be fine. Doing an incomplete job is better than not starting most things in life.

In conclusion

If you're stuck at something in your life and you can't seem to make progress on it, try it the passive way first, and when you're done, iterate and improve, until you can do it efficiently.