Be careful what you ask for

How efficient is your organisation? Do you have efficiency measures for everything that is going on? You do? Then stop it, right now, and read on.

Maximising the efficiency of every aspect of a business will probably have a negative impact on overall performance. That is not to say that measuring efficiency is a bad thing, it is just not useful if the measuring is not effective. Just to make it clear;

Efficient is doing things right

Effective is doing the right things.

The importance of Mission

I was once charged with turning round a business that was in financial difficulties, one of my first tasks was to understand what made its customers keep coming back. I discovered that over 30% of the added value our customers benefited from was our expertise, and we were giving it away; the customers were getting a free service. Furthermore, there were no processes or systems in place that enabled part of the service to be measured or charged for; the challenge was therefore made more difficult because, apart from plugging the operational gap, the customer had got used to the free service and saw no reason to suddenly start paying for it.