Efficiency is the new gold

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What makes your business special? It doesn't matter if you are one person working out of your house or a company with thousands of employees. If you are the most efficient at what you do, you're golden.

Efficiency is a big concept. That label belongs on a lot of good things. If you are efficient, you:

• Know what is important
• Focus on what is important
• Know how to communicate what is important, and make it easy for others to focus on what is important
• Give clear instructions
• Are organized; you know where things are and you are constantly improving how you organize and manage them
• Are constantly checking your business environment for shifts and trends
• Move quickly into new areas, as soon as it is clear that you should move into those areas
• Are able to respond quickly and meaningfully to anyone, including customers, prospects, vendors, employees, partners and government agencies.
• Can gather the right kind of data to make informed decisions in a timely manner
• Can plan ahead so that one task leads smoothly into the next, or can even be done simultaneously
• Don't allow anyone to waste time on issues that don't contribute to progress or solutions, including political squabbles
• Make sure that everyone has all the tools they need to do their best, most efficient work

People who are efficient work as hard as anyone else, but they don't just work while they are working. They are constantly asking themselves: "What's the next right thing for me to do?" "Could this be done better/faster?" "Should I be making a tool so that this goes faster next time, or is this just a one-up situation?"

Obscurity is the enemy of efficiency.

As I have been preparing for the leadership summit I'm giving next week, I've been thinking a lot about efficiency. It's become obvious to me that obscurity - lack of clarity - is one of the biggest enemies of efficiency.

 “What?”

“Say again?”

“But I thought you meant...”

Anytime workers have to ask for instructional clarification, they are not being efficient. The worker and the boss are both being inefficient, which means that other workers will be less efficient, and customers won't get what they need - when and how they expect it to be delivered.

One of the better books on leadership, by John Edmund Haggai (The Influential Leader), contains a quote by Thomas Carlyle: "Genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains." The most efficient managers take pains with their instructions. They know that one good set of instructions will eliminate countless revenue-sapping inefficiencies.

An efficient company that makes/sells exactly what another, inefficient company makes/sells will beat the inefficient company on almost all levels. The efficient company's people will be better informed, their workplace will be more functional, their quality control will be more reliable, and their customers will be served better. They will also get more out of every dollar they make.

Efficiency is just like money in the bank. These days, maybe even better than money in the bank. It's the new gold.