Effectiveness v.s Efficiency

These terms are often misplaced and used interchangeably considering to most people it means the same but it doesn’t and has completely different purposes to them.

Effectiveness is about how well you do your work. It’s about doing your work as the input and producing an output.

It doesn’t matter how long that it takes, as long as an output is produced and works, it’s considered effective.

For example, if someone does a task within a few hours while another in a day, both are considered effective as long as the output is produced.

Whether the former or latter has more quality or quantity is another topic though.

That being said, if we were to measure a person’s ability to deliver within a time constraint then it’s considered tracking their efficiency.

A usual example of efficiency we are familiar with is vehicles having less or more efficiency regarding fuel. If it’s more efficient, you get more miles rather than the former.

So if a person completes a task faster and produces a solution that solves the problem then he’s considered to be both efficient and effective.

Why effectiveness is more important than efficiency

While all that being said, effectiveness is considered to be the primary priority.

That means that having effectiveness without efficiency is fine but having efficiency but no effectiveness is putting the cart before the horse.

Effectiveness results in generating a solution to a problem but all efficiency does is complete such a solution with least energy, time and resources.

But all that efficiency improvements are considered in a situation where the solution itself is meaningful and solves the problem.

But what if the solution itself is the wrong one for the solution? That means you wasted energy, time and resources efficiently.

Ironically, from a technical perspective, the fact that you efficiently wasted is not considered efficient.

That happens because effectiveness is what delivers the solution and efficiency is a nice bonus.

It’s better to be late and correct rather than early and wrong.

If you’re late but correct, at least your efforts get rewarded and give a result but the latter is nothing but a redo from the ground up again.

As Peter Drucker said, “effectiveness is doing the right things, while efficiency is doing things right.”

Of course, theoretical worlds aside, efficiency matters when corporations work in short cycles and when an individual has limited time unless it’s a passion project.

But again, if you’re going to do it anyways, might as well be correct in effectiveness than efficiency.

While I did pit these two against each other, when you actually define metrics or targets to make things better, these two overlap often.

This often is the contrast with the right goal and the method to go about it.

As Peter Drucker says, "The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question."

My final thoughts regarding this would be to simply identify several right things to fix (effectiveness), choose one that’s the most urgent and important (Eisenhower Matrix) and find the best method (efficiency) regarding solving it if possible.