Becoming more efficient or productive are concepts we hear about every day. All organizations, institutions and companies are concerned that they need to be more efficient, but what does it mean? Does it mean everyone has to work harder, work smarter, introduce new technology and computer systems? The answer to this may be rather "both-and" than an "either-or".
Both in society and in organizations, we have gained an indisputable belief that centralization and heavy professional environments increase efficiency, but this is about resource efficiency or task efficiency. What matters in an organization is flow efficiency, process efficiency or effectiveness. This is what leads to effective deliveries.
Are tasks important, or deliverables? In many quality systems, we experience an exaggerated focus on tasks. These, in turn, are related to roles, and the responsibilities of those who hold roles are defined by their tasks. The tasks are rarely questioned, it is decided that they should be performed, and so it is. This does not create effectivity. What is important is to know what is to be delivered, or the deliveries. No one makes a living from the fact that their tasks are important, unless they have deliveries that someone needs and is willing to pay for.
I have often experienced in organizations in conversations with a staff or team that when I ask what their deliverables are, they cannot respond. I have also experienced that a team is surprised that they have very few, or almost no deliveries, when they try to analyze themselves. Is there no more we are responsible for delivering? they ask. Then why do we have to do all these tasks?
Most academic communities’ priorities how efficient a task is solved. Since this is often a minor part of a process, this way of thinking leads to efficient islands, as described in the book This is Lean. This is often referred to as resource efficiency defined as value-added time/consumed resource. With efficient islands, individual tasks are achieved efficiently, while deliveries to the end customer are ineffective. If we measure the resource efficiency of a normal organization, it is usually twenty to thirty percent.
If an organization is to become more effective, deliveries from the organization must be more effective. We also call this flow efficiency or process efficiency, and it is measured as value-added time/delivery lead time. If we measure the process efficiency of a normal organization, it is usually one to five per cent. In order to increase this, we must focus on the customer's, or the user's needs, and have an organization that focuses continuously on the customer or customer group.
It is an illusion that an organization is effective if it does not have high process efficiency. It is how effectively we deliver services or products to our customers or users that describe the effectiveness of our organization, not how efficient we work with tasks. We see that this is largely neglected in rationalization projects focusing on increasing task efficiency, which makes the organization less effective.
In addition, senior management and politicians make the fatal mistake of defining their own information needs as important deliverables from their organization, not only in line with, but over the organization's primary customer needs. As a result, organizations are inundated with secondary tasks such as form filling, informing, and data collection, resulting in the organization's primary functions being damaged and losing their ability to deliver.
Instead of bringing together people in large, centralized expert groups with a focus on heavy professional environments, we need to spread the experts in delivery teams with proximity to the customer and focus on the customer's need to become an effective supplier.
Niklas Modig about the efficiency paradox:
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