What is “Effectiveness”?

In my introductory post (https://keithacollyer.medium.com/a-new-blog-777c46c92a27), I said I would write on “effectiveness” but I didn’t say what this means. This post addresses that topic.

I am fascinated by the ways in which individuals and organizations can become more effective and my goal is to help you to do that. I have studied and used many approaches, from simple “To Do” lists to more complex systems such as Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits and David Allen’s Getting things Done and concluded that none of these provides a complete answer.

Introduction

Many years (decades) ago people who had to juggle lots of tasks and priorities concentrated on time management. Then came the realisation that this focused on the wrong thing. You were not managing time, you were managing how you used time. So the emphasis changed to managing what you do and when you do it. This was perhaps exemplified by David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach. Moving on from that, you now get people talking about productivity. To me, the leaders in this field are Francis Wade (https://franciswade.medium.com), Michael Hyatt (https://fullfocus.co) and Mike Vardy (https://productivityist.com), who come at it from different directions.

One thing that is common to all the current thought leaders and experts is a focus on improving what you get out of your time. Implicit in this, though rarely stated, is not just that you want to do (achieve) the most in the time available, but that you have created the most value (however you measure value) out of that time. This is why I prefer the term “effectiveness” over “productivity”. You can be tremendously productive but be producing the wrong things.

The OED defines effectiveness as the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result.

Have you ever asked yourself how effective is your organisation, department or team in achieving the results you want? What about your systems and processes? Is everything running as well as it should — or is there room for improvement?

Making a difference

Focusing on improvement

Every organisation has an area that would benefit from producing better results. Imagine how different things would be if everyone and everything was performing exactly the way they should…

How effective is your organisation, department or team in achieving the results you want? Is everything running as well as it should — or is there room for improvement?

Effectiveness: Improving people, processes and systems

Effectiveness is successfully producing a desired result and consistently hitting goals. What does this mean to you and your business? You may manage time well, you may be efficient, you may be productive, each of these goes part way to achieving your goals, but are you as effective as you could be? You can become more effective: whether through better cost, time and quality management; report and presentation delivery; improved product and system development, or process management.

You become more effective by being more organized, more able to use your time well and, importantly, less stressed. And there are associated benefits:

• Work becomes easier, more enjoyable and less stressful.
• People know what is expected of them, when it is expected, and what is coming up in the future.
• Individual and collective performance and productivity increase.
• Accountability improves and company morale soars.

Achieving the outcomes you want

The first step to becoming more effective — and getting the outcomes you want — is recognising that there’s room for improvement. And there is always room for improvement.

What this involves

One of the key things I have learnt is that people focus on solutions before they have understood their problems. So first you need to work to understand what is stopping you from doing what you need to be effective.

Once you understand what is blocking you, you can start to work on what the solution might be and how you can go about implementing that solution.

There is no single approach that will provide the answer for everyone because there is no single question — everyone has different problems.

You become more effective by balancing cost, time and quality through using time effectively, writing and presenting well, improving product development and management and improving the effectiveness of your processes.

And how do I do that?

As you can imagine from the above, there are lots of areas that can be improved, and each of these has several approaches that can be considered. I intend to cover some of these in future posts. I do not intend to provide a comprehensive overview of all possible approaches in all areas, particularly where specialist knowledge of processes or industries are concerned. My background is mostly in systems engineering and software so that drives what I can write about to a large extent.