Of effectiveness and efficiency
There is a subtle and yet profound difference between the two concepts. Moreover I believe we should pay particular attention at how both terms are (mis-)used. Let me explain...
The first reason I find those two words captivating is because both “efficient” and “effective” translate as efficace in my native French whilst effectivement translate back into “indeed”… Stay with me…
Definitions
I thought it might be useful to turn to etymology but that was pointless (see Appendix 1 if you’re curious). I also found various definitions which are distilled down into the following:
Effective is about "producing a result that is wanted" whilst Efficient focuses on doing something "without wasting materials, time, or energy".
In other words, effective is about getting the result even if it consumes unnecessary resources to do so.
Example - Calculating prime numbers
Many years ago, I sat a technical interview and was asked to write an algorithm to find prime numbers. I wrote a few lines of code which consisted in going through all integers and checking whether they could be divided by previous numbers. It produced the intended result, it was effective.
But, as pointed out by the interviewer, skipping even numbers would have made it twice as efficient… I was a bit upset with myself, I had missed an obvious efficiency improvement. He carried on, there were many more… 1
Effectiveness qualifies a solution to a problem.
The “desired result” targeted by effectiveness is meaningful in the context of a problem that needs solving. But problems have underlying (and often hidden) dimensions:
Let’s have a look at a simple problem, getting from point A to B:
Legs are effective to go from home to the shops 2km away.
A car is also effective to go from home to the shops 2km away (and it addresses the hidden dimensions of speed and convenience).
A boat is effective at taking people from London to the US.
A plane is also effective at taking people from London to the US. (and it addresses the hidden dimensions of speed and convenience).
Efficiency qualifies its ressource utilisation.
Let’s carry on with the transportation example:
A cargo ship is both effective and efficient at getting containers from China to the US.
A plane is also effective at achieving the goal but is not efficient if fuel consumption and cost are considered.
Areas of potential optimisation are found when effective but inefficient solutions are in place. You will see countless example of this in the business world where manual, complicated and convoluted processes have evolved to be effective at dealing with all edge cases but are massively inefficient at dealing with the usual ones.
Yet, efficiency is not always the answer!
It seems reasonable that our society has evolved to focus on efficiency. Nonetheless, issues arise when looking at the efficiency of individual tasks, regardless of their initial effectiveness within a greater context. Unfortunately, it is possible to efficiently do something ineffective.
Example 1 - Inbox processing:
Being quick at responding and sorting emails is efficient. There are many « productivity hacks » to do emails faster, to process them more efficiently...
At one point in my career I had a zero inbox policy and I was receiving 300+ emails per day. That’s how I made the mistake of becoming very efficient at doing something ineffective, something that I should not have been doing at all…2
Example 2 - Glass recycling
Recycling was invented as an effective way of dealing with waste. If we look at glass specifically, we’ve created an efficient used-glass collection system, and amazing recycling factories3 that can sort broken glass by color, remove contaminants and create the raw material ready to be melted into new bottles.
But however efficient that process has become (and to be fair it is impressively efficient), the overall approach still has serious limitations. In the UK, less than 70% of waste glass is recycled, and the recycled material only saves 40% of the energy needed to create new bottles.
Even if nearly all of the used-glass gets recycled (the best countries achieve 90%), the recycling process will always be less energy-efficient than re-using a glass container (You know, like in the old days when we had returnable bottles with a deposit…).
Recycling glass (even if done efficiently) is not effective when the objective is to limit climate change. It was effective when the objective was to prioritise convenience for the consumer.
How to approach this conundrum
We initially identified that solutions can be effective but inefficient. Yet addressing the efficiency doesn’t necessarily address all of the dimensions of the initial problem. I believe this is because efficiency is implemented independently on tasks that were not originally discrete (i.e. the tasks are connected, and considering each one on their own means the initial dimensions and overall perspective can be lost).
Example - Driving to work
Driving your car to work can be effective, (assuming your car is reliable of course). Typically, drivers will look at time efficiency through route optimisation and departure time.
But what if all that efficiency gets you to work at 5:30AM… what about looking at time wasted rather than time traveled? Taking public transport might take longer but would allow you to work half of that time and get to work at a more sensible hour.
In this simplistic example:
The driver is trying to make the car journey efficient.
But making the journey itself more efficient is actually a different problem.
Additionally, time is just one dimension. Productivity, cost and carbon footprint would add to the optimisation challenge.
This illustrates how efficiency does not ensure the overall best or most sensible solution. It is obvious in this case that our driver just needs to step back and widen the scope of optimisation (the underlying purpose), and/or introduce additional considerations (the dimensions of efficiency).
Generally speaking, I believe the solution to the conundrum is to close the loop on the linear approach illustrated above. This is a two step process:
Stepping back → review what the underlying purpose is.
Re-framing → Are the problem and its dimensions correctly stated?
The future of efficiency
It feels the world is at a crossroad. Ultimate efficiency could mean a life of abundance for everyone, as long as we stay away from the most efficient way of killing each other and find an effective solution to climate change…
Risk #1 - Artificial Intelligence
AI is very efficient at completing discrete tasks. There is little doubt AI has numerous applications in domains where human beings are comparatively slow or can make mistakes. It’s not a matter of if but a matter of when and how the shift takes place.
More importantly what usually hides behind AI is machine learning or deep learning. Algorithms can effectively be learning the stupidity of a dataset and efficiently scale up its biases… AI (at least in the way it is currently implemented and used) is also never going to question why it is completing a task whilst it meticulously applies the learnt bias. Even if we delegate the efficiency to AI, we need to be closing the loop and not forget to step back and re-assess.
Risk #2 - Losing the big picture
Capitalism is a great tool, it has allowed us to evolve as a society and the resulting growth and progress are undeniable. Yet, it is becoming increasingly obvious that our current “brand” of capitalism is not quite adapted to the world most people want to build.
From a business perspective, ultimate efficiency is too often reduced to financial maximisation. The goal is to be the next Unicorn, to make billions, to have the biggest rocket, etc… Where is the mission? Fortunately the Patagonia and Kickstarter of this world are leading the pack for a different approach to efficiency, there is another way!
Risk #3 The fragility of high efficiency.
As illustrated over the past few years with the Covid pandemic, the globalised world in which we are living is also intrinsically fragile because of its efficiency.
First, the virus spread very efficiently because of how quickly (efficiently) we can travel from one side of the planet to the other. Secondly, the efficiency of the supply chain meant that there was little capacity for dealing with issues. Highly tuned and efficient systems have no bandwidth to adapt to change. Think about an assembly-line where everyone works back to back at full speed, one slip and the whole chain falls apart. At lower speed, your colleague gives you a hand, you catch-up up and things keep moving.
Things change. Business is unpredictable. Employees are human and humans make mistakes. Does ultimate efficiency implies the elimination of human beings from the process? Once we’re out, extra attention needs to be paid to the original purpose of anything that is being optimised…
Risk #4 Efficient living
What is the most efficient way of living one’s life? Is it to get to the end of it whilst using the least amount of ressources possible. Shoot me now… literally.
How you live life effectively is probably a metaphysical question but our quest for efficiency in our day to day life might be edging towards unreason. Do we need high-frequency trading? Do we really need next hour delivery? Pills to lose weight faster? More pixels on our screens, cameras on our phones and more blades on our razors?
None of those things are intrinsically bad as long as they are not just hiding a lack of purpose.
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