A decade or so ago, we were really focused on efficiency. Classically this is considered to be ‘an efficient means that produces with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort’. Sounds really good and logical and assumes that we have waste, are able to identify it and then know how to remove it or at least work without it.
The problem is that we don’t often know we are doing something wasteful until someone else points it out. Often when they do, it’s a bit too late or too difficult to change as we’ve based a lot of things on that…so we keep it, probably modify a little to be fair and then continue on with our new level of efficiency. We need to build better ways to measure our efficiency. Problem is though that the measurement is usually associated with the other ‘e-word’, effectiveness, or the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result.
So…..we are perfectly happy to measure whether something is successful in producing the desired result but not the way it was derived? Seems to be more efficient to measure how things are done than the consequences of them?