Noted management expert, Peter Drucker, says

“Doing the right thing is more important than doing things right.”

Doing the right thing is effectiveness; doing things right is efficiency.

Every day we should focus first on effectiveness issues and tasks and make sure we have the capacity to get the most important done.

All the time, we should be looking at how we are delivering these outcomes … ‘Is there a better way?’  ‘How can I change what I do to make it more efficient?’  ‘How can we change what we do to make it more efficient?’ That’s the first step towards leveraged effectiveness, looking for continuous process improvement so that we create even more capacity to focus on the the Effective tasks.

Of course, people will say ‘I don’t have the capacity or the time to do that – my schedule is already too full’ The ruthless reality, however,  is that those same people will create the capacity to fix the process or deliver the result despite the constraints …. its just that they will create that capacity at the 11th hour, just before the final deadline, at a higher business and personal cost than would have been the case if they made the Effectiveness Decision earlier on.

Everything you and I do involves an overhead element. Creating and controlling the right overhead at the right time is much better than being subject to it when it is almost too late.

If you want a process to manage continuous process improvement when you are already working flat out just ask, its part of what we help our clients achieve.

I like Peter Drucker, he has always looked beyond the fads and fashion of leadership and management. He is more substance than style. His ideas resonate even though he died in 2005. I still talk about him in the present tense, and probably always will. His book: ‘The Daily Drucker’ is always close to hand – bite sized words of wisdom for busy people. Here’ one from the archive you might like … 8 Peter Drucker Questions for improved effectiveness.

Until next time……