Efficient vs Effective

We're a nation that's become enamored with efficiency and lost our way on being effective. Because head count at an organization is an all-important corporate metric, we come up with new and innovative ways to get by with fewer people. We assume that by buying the latest computer program, hardware gadget, or by honing some process that we can further reduce our reliance on others to get the job done. In so doing, we're hero's to the corporate politic and justify our own existences. I'd say we've made our bed and it's an ill place to sleep.

Our organization is largely made up of technical people, mainly engineers and technicians. It's always been that way, but there's an important difference between today and days from the past. In the past there were a larger number of technicians that helped with implementation details and there were support people that dealt with non-technical issues. Today there are many fewer technicians and no support people. In our zeal to become efficient, we've decided to outsource many of our past technician tasks and we now have much better computer systems that can help us with our non-technical support issues. Now, instead of engineers doing engineering, we're writing documents and dealing with vendors that are doing the technical work.

We've become so efficient that we can even sort our own incoming mail and order our own pencils. In fact, that's what engineers, managers, and even directors are doing. Since we still need to do budgets, still need to presentations, still get mail, and still need pencils, we do it all. Now there's a rational nation. We're so efficient that we can sort our own mail ... at the fully burdened rate of someone making $200,000 per year. Now there's a mail man to be proud of!

Since we still have to accomplish all of the burdensome tasks of the business and there's only a certain number of hours in the day, somethings gotta give. Usually, that's actual engineering work. Over the past months I've had innumerable conversations about important work that had to be delayed because we just didn't have anyone to put on it. Another sadly humorous conversation was about hiring someone in to do clerical work and paying for it out of our own salaries. It was pointed out that we can't do that because that would add a head count. The silliness is getting worse by declaring people as student interns, because this position isn't considered to be an added head count. Unfortunately, student interns can only be on staff for a maximum of 4 months per year.

Speaking of interns, I had one of those last year. He was very bright and a great help to our department. I had him working on new technologies that I wasn't sure would pan out. The cost was minimal and the results turned out better than expected. You'd think that the company would want to encourage this by having a year-round student intern program. No, we can only have the students for the allowable time and then we lose the expertise on whatever they developed. That's a rational nation.

So, where does this leave us? I'd love to tell you but I've got some documents to get out, a presentation to work on, and maybe I'll see if I can't get some office supplies that we're running low on ordered.