Effective vs. Efficient- A Basis for Productivity
Individuals and management must be constantly asking whether they and/or their staff are being effective vs efficient. One can be very efficient, however, the outcome may not be effective. What counts is what you actually do and what the actual results are.
Let’s look at use of time. It is worth noting that C. Northcote Parkinson, a British citizen and civil servant, spent some of his time teaching in Singapore. While teaching here he came up with the famous phrase “It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Parkinson’s Law C. Northcote Parkinson was Raffles Professor of History at the University Malaya/Singapore in the 1950′s. The article (and the excerpt below) first appeared in The Economist in November 1955.
“It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend an entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil…..”
The first sentence sums it all up. So we need to ask ourselves…
Isn’t it time we start looking at what gets done and how you actually get it done?
(inspired by Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week)
Trip Allen-Team Egyii, Singapore
Tags: Efficiency, Productivity, Tim Ferriss
