The two terms “organisational effectiveness” and “organisational efficiency” are both well used when describing the need to make improvements to the way in which organisations do their work. I suspect, however, that I am not alone when I sometimes wonder whether people are actually describing the same phenomenon.

Are they same? Are they different? If they are different, which matters most? Which should be the priority in your organisation? We shall explore these questions further and try to offer answers in this article.

Effectiveness or Efficiency?

To try to discover the difference between the two, I turned to my dictionary where I discover that “efficient” is described as “working effectively”. That could explain why there is some confusion in the mind. Modern usage clearly finds it hard to distinguish between the words.

I had another go. I found a dictionary from the 1950s. It suggests that “efficient” means “competent or capable” while the most relevant definition of effective in our context is “actually useable”. It seems likely that the American business guru Peter Drucker had similar definitions in mind when he said “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

Effectiveness and Efficiency in the Organisation

I think that the Drucker definition is helpful when we think about applying these concepts to the organisation. Making an organisation effective is about selecting those things which it must do, and by implication not doing the things that don’t need to be done. It’s about making sure that we haven’t allowed unnecessary steps to creep in to our systems of work. It’s about eliminating steps which were once necessary but no longer are. It’s about making sure that departments exist because they have to, not just because they always have done.

Efficiency on the other hand is simply about getter cialis without prescription better at what you do. The word “better” can be qualified in many different ways. It could be a higher Cialis Professional quality output. It could take less time. It could cost less. It could be all of these things and more. In an organisational context efficiency is one of the goals where we never seem to able to achieve perfection. We can always keep getting better at if, we put our minds to it.

Now that we have explored the concepts of organisational effectiveness and organisational efficiency it is clear that the two are different, and that the answer to the question as to which matters, is that they both matter. “Which matters most?” The one is pointless without the other.

Your Priority

It is clear that any organisation that is serious about remaining competitive will need to pay attention to both of these factors. But does one have a priority? Drucker No prescription cialis has another quote which gives us a clue; “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Your task is to make your organisation effective first of all. Make sure it only does the things that it needs to do. Then focus on making the rest efficient.

Author Bio: Eric Thompson has spent over 20 years helping others to make their organisation effective. Find out more about organisational effectiveness. For more articles and enquiries visit JEST Management Services Articles

Category: Business/Management/Organizational
Keywords: organisational effectiveness