Organisational Effectiveness or Organisational Efficiency?
Author: Eric Thompson
Eric Thompson considers which is more important in terms of developing the performance of the organisation.
“You say ee-ther and I say eye-ther,
You say nee-ther and I say ny-ther;
Ee-ther, eye-ther, nee-ther, ny-ther -
Let's call the whole thing off! “
For those of you of a certain age these words taken from the 1930’s song “Let’s call the whole thing off” by George and Ira Gershwin may evoke a flood of memories. Those of more tender years are probably thinking “What is that all about?” Whichever camp you fall in, the point of the lyric is clear, the choice doesn’t matter.
Let’s bring ourselves up to date and into the world of organisational improvement and ask ourselves the question “Is my goal to improve organisational effectiveness or organisational efficiency?”
If you are reading this and aren’t sure that you can nail the difference between effectiveness and efficiency then you are not alone. My contemporary dictionary defines “efficient” as “working effectively”. So are we any the wiser? Modern usage clearly has the words moving to be almost interchangeable. I had to go back to a dictionary from half a century ago where the most relevant definition of effective in our context is “actually useable” or perhaps in a more modern turn of phrase “fit for purpose”. On the other hand “efficient” is given to mean “competent or capable”.
The American business guru Peter Drucker clearly saw this difference when he said “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
"Dont we need both?"
So now that we have some insight into what the words mean, let’s go back to the question. To improve our organisation, which do we want? Organisational effectiveness or organisational efficiency? We certainly want to focus on doing the right things and eliminating unnecessary work, but then having done that don’t we also want to make sure that the things that remain are done well? Don’t we need both?
You say effective and I say efficient
Let’s call the whole thing off!