“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker

Most leaders – most people – feel constantly pressed for time.  There are so many things we want to do, things we feel like we need to do, and we never feel like we have time to do them all.  It’s a constant feeling of pressure.

In response to that, people spend a lot of time thinking about doing things as efficiently as they can.  They look for ways to reduce waste, steps to eliminate, things to automate, etc.  Anything that can be done in order to get something accomplished in less time must be worth doing.

One of the things that tends to get pushed aside while we’re all so busy is the simple act of taking time to think.  There are a lot of people who get stressed by stopping to think because they feel like they aren’t allowed to do any stopping.  There are too many things to do, so anything that requires me to stop doing things is something I don’t have time for.

That’s obviously a problem, and for lots of reasons.  In this context though, it’s a problem because while we’re busy trying to doing all of these things as quickly as possible, we don’t often stop and consider whether we should be doing any of these things at all. 

Stop (if you can) and think.  Of all the things you’re going to hurry up and do today, how many of them are critically important?  If some of them never got done, would your organization go out of business?  Would you lose your job?  Would anybody ever even know?

We’ve been trained that nothing matters more than getting things done, and we’ve learned that lesson so well that we largely don’t even care if what we’re doing matters.  We’re just proud of everything we’ve gotten done.

It’s more important for leaders to focus on what really matters, even if they’re not efficient, then to very quickly take care of ten things of little value.  Is your day full of what matters?  Or are you busy efficiently doing things that aren’t all that important? 

The answer to that question says a lot about you as a leader.  What do you want that answer to be?