The Effectiveness Lens - Why you should focus on being effective over being efficient.

Going through university I studied manufacturing systems which is a fancy title for industrial engineering. We were the guys who learned lots about figuring out how to be productive. After university I landed a great job in an electronics company working as, you guessed it, a production engineer. Our focus, we were told was to create processes and systems to be as efficient as possible. We would get the stop watches out and understand the timings, the balance the change overs and so much more, nothing was left untimed or unbalanced. Things were documented, and instructions were given and all the time the focus was being efficient, get more good stuff out since making bad stuff is terribly inefficient. We got our machines and processes going so well that they almost never stopped running, it was a sight to behold. Everything was going well until we got a new boss who was a lean guy, and really was not impressed with all our efficiency.  

Something happened on the way to efficiency

Our new boss did a couple of things, firstly he took us all through Covey's 7 habits of Highly effective people which even today is a must-read book. It talks about the things you need to do to be effective, which was to become a theme, it stressed about being people focused and that you should be effective with people and efficient with things. The other big thing from covey was begin with the end in mind, i.e. when you start something consider the outcome that you actually want before you start, that way you can make the steps towards that outcome and adjust as you need to along the way.

Then we started talking about lean, we were all give a book called The Machine That Changed the world, which is another must read book, and we started talking about waste in the process. We started to look at what we were making, how much and realised that we were making way too much of pretty much everything to become efficient. There was no need to build such large quantities if we changed how we worked, it turns out those larger quantities were slowing down our ability to respond to customer needs both internally to the company and externally. The focus on being 'efficient and productive' meant that everyone was being kept busy, in many cases doing things that really were not needed. Worst of all we were inflicting processes and systems on people without ever asking for their input, why would way, they were just doing the job we were the engineers! (I was young!)

Out of both the books the interesting thing our boss focused on was not actually about being productive, being productive or efficient, as I have come to realise those efficiency is an outcome of doing the right things. Being productive or efficient if you prefer is only possible if you look at it through the lens of being effective.

While Covey argued that you should be effective with people and efficient with things, I am now convinced that you need to be effective with both, everything else is an outcome of that.

The Effectiveness Lens

If you step back for a moment and just think about looking at everything just a little differently, about applying an effectiveness lens to everything your decisions become quite different.

Firstly, let us all be clear about the meaning of the two words:

If we take an efficiency lens to a problem, we are going to look at how we increase productivity, get more out, make it easier to doing a job and so forth, all of which is great to do but none of that remotely cares about if it's the right thing to do.

For example, if you get an order from a customer for 1000 widgets you could set up a line and be efficient and product all 1000 of the widgets in 2 weeks. To do that you expedited the materials, and you worked a little extra to get it all done in one shot, no need to change over or stop the line.

If I put on my effectiveness lens however there are some things that pop up. This line could not work for anyone else for 2 weeks, so their things got left behind or we would have to work extra elsewhere. We possibly paid more money in overtime and expediting parts. Finally, when everything was delivered to the customer, they had to store it all as it will take them 8 weeks to work through the 1000 units, tying up money and space. If, however I ask what the desired outcome is, the end in mind, I find that the customer runs at 125 units a week, if we can deliver that then we will never stop their line and save costs. Moreover, I am also going to be able to service more clients at the same time and not expedite the material. Suddenly my line and business are more effective than they were before in serving this customer and the others.

Another example is when it comes to getting things done, when you want to improve something for example. When I started out as a young engineer, I was told you are the engineer you decide and design the line, just do it quickly, be more productive! That led to me trying to figure everything out by myself so that I did not 'waste time' talking to people and getting their buy in and input to the design. As a study in being ineffective, this was a master-class. By taking the time and talking to everyone involved you get the outcomes you truly need quicker and the people are involved. You do not waste any human potential (another lean waste) in coming up with a solution, you ask the experts. It is the same when you need something done, you can keep doing it yourself (efficient) but by teaching someone else you free up your time and build their knowledge and grow the person (effective).

Begin with the end in mind

My stopping and thinking, what is the desired outcome or the intended result of the action or the process or system you instantly turn your thinking to being effective. You instinctively start thinking about what are all thing things that need to be in place for this to become a reality. Being effective means you start with people. You ask questions to understand what they need and what will help them and why it will help them.

By focusing on efficiently first you focus on being fast, on stepping around or past those who can help and about not stopping when you should and not about the impacts on the people who have been dragged along in the drive to be efficient.

Being effective means you do the right things, being efficient means you do things right, but they could well be the wrong things (and that's not productive).