How’s it all going? I hope you are doing well this week, what we will cover today is a quote from my quote book.

Like always, let’s cut to the chase:

“You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things” – Stephen Covey

This teaches us an important lesson not just in business but in every aspect of our lives. Throughout my own experience, and maybe it has been similar for you, I have seen how much of life is framed through the perspective of efficiency. Be it how fast we can run a mile or how quickly a food delivery can be made. Either through apps, our phones or just the clock in our heads, we are constantly up against the clock.

Now in some cases this is okay, when things don’t involve people, then sure it is okay. For instance, measuring the time it takes for a file to be downloaded onto a computer. However, when what we are talking about involves people, this efficiency stopwatch kind of perspective puts unnecessary stress and anxiety into the situation.

What Covey offers to us in this quote, is for us not look at people as processes to be managed, but as human beings with unique and sometimes unmeasurable qualities. This is why with people we need to take the view of effectiveness instead. Effectiveness is about building people up by acknowledging where their skillset and experience lies, and then developing them from there. This approach appears to me to be the best because it removes the tension so commonly created in our work environment. While also encouraging the other person to be motivated to exceed their own limits.

Managing becomes less about trying to raise or lower some metric and rather becomes about building an effective team whose members manage themselves. Your role from there is to provide support and coaching to help the team further. The end result I believe and have seen is that when effectiveness with people is valued and implemented, the efficiency in processes and things naturally just follows.

Thanks again for coming down and sharing your thoughts. You are all wonderful people.