What is the difference between being efficient and being effective?
Efficiency asks how to do things well. Effectiveness asks what is the right thing to do.
It is possible to do the wrong things marvelously well, still, you waste precious time and build up frustration and despair.
According to Effective Executive by Peter Drucker who researched and studied many famous effective managers and executives:
Effectiveness is self-discipline. A complex of practices. A Habit.
The 5 most commonalities of highly effective executives are:
1) Know their time: Actively record and pay attention to where their time goes.
The higher you rise inside an organization, the harder it gets to control your time. Focus on allocating blocks of time, enough to get the task at hand done.
2) Focus on contribution: result-oriented. Every organization is a bubble. Each has its own mission to serve the outer environment. The results are outside. Declutter the mind from inside noise.
Regularly ask: “What results are expected of me?”
3) Build on strengths: There is no “universal genius”. Each has his flaws and strengths. To be effective you have to organize yourself and your subordinates by their strengths on different tasks.
The organization itself should be built on strengths to achieve extraordinary results. Building on fixing weaknesses or solving flaws and problems may be helpful, but it can bring mediocrity at best.
4) Priorities: You have only that much of time. Always redefine your priorities and the few tasks that bring the most contribution to outstanding results.
5) Effective Decisions: Focus on conceptually understanding the problem. Work on dissenting opinions rather than finding the best call. There is no absolutely perfect judgment.
Work on receiving different and clashing views on solving the problem, then take the risk on taking the “probably” right decision, with something to fall back onto.
If everybody agrees on some decision or path, there is no decision to make. You should encourage disagreement, then dissent the judgment.
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