EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS

Efficiency is how much waste results from your activities. Ideally, you want to minimize waste to achieve high efficiency.

Effectiveness is how well you are achieving your goals. Ideally, you want to maximize the attainment of your goals.

Typically, the business world emphasizes efficiency. “Cut here. Cut there. Reduce expenditures by another 10 percent!” cries management. Determining the effectiveness of an organization often remains an abstract concept until year-end when performance assessment occurs. Then the assessment arrives too late; after the fact, everyone realizes what was efficient but not effective and vice versa. Indeed, sometimes the two can conflict.

Ideally, you want equilibrium between efficiency ...

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