effectiveness Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

One response to a changing economy, whether global or digital, is to pursue efficiency. Cut costs, overheads, staff and anything else you can to make your company as efficient as possible.

I’m quite obviously not Umair Haque, but I’ve been in companies or known friends and associates who have all been part of this drive at various times. And I’ve got a theory that even if it worked in the past, it’s not going to work for companies in the global digital world.

Rather than becoming ruthlessly efficient, companies now need to be incredibly effective. For starters, efficiency only gives you an advantage if you’re either going to use the excess cash somewhere else, or your main rivals are going to go bust first. And anyone that does invest is going to grab a big advantage – in a global digital world, there’s going to be someone somewhere that has a bit of cash available.

Instead, the focus needs to be on effectiveness – for consumers as well as your business. It’s efficient to deal with everyone in 20 seconds and move on. It’s effective to take the time to ensure good service and a repeat customer for life.

For example – somewhere like the retailer Argos would be seen as efficient. Give consumers a catalogue, and distribute from big warehouses without investing in floor space to display everything or salespeople to demonstrate it.

Meanwhile I’d say Zappos has always been incredibly effective – there’s a huge level of interest in the UK even though they don’t sell here. Offering new starters money to quit, or spending time on Twitter and Facebook providing great customer service probably isn’t the most efficient thing to do. But it’s damn effective.

Combining digital and offline teams is definitely efficient. But only in some circumstances is it effective.
Cutting back on digital to focus on traditional revenue generators is efficient. But it’s not going to be effective over time in what are declining markets for everyone.
Using a social network to broadcast out your messages to everyone is efficient. But if people see it and don’t act on it to generate any revenue, it’s not effective.
Running everything from a centralised template is efficient – but when people see it as a lack of effort, or get bored, it’s not efficient.
Running the least amounts of resource is efficient. But it isn’t effective if people leave/get ill/rivals staff up to provide better service etc.
Providing free drinks to staff or other benefits isn’t efficient. But if can be very effective.

I’m not saying you should, or shouldn’t do any of the examples above. I totally believe that utilising the digital world, particularly innovation, social networking and customer/vendor relationships etc will give you a huge advantage over rivals which either don’t use them, or use them badly.

But whether you’re using digital or offline, internal changes or external, or trying to improve social media marketing, the essential thing for 2010 is to look for the most effective route to a return, not the most efficient.

I often refer to social media marketing starting when a caveman went running to the next cave to tell his neighbours about this new thing he’d discovered called ‘fire’. It’s something I’ve referred to in internal and external presentations, and it hopefully drives home the fact that recommendations between friends is something that has gone on since humanity started communicating.

The reason it came to mind recently is that I’ve finally got round to reading a book recommended to me by a good colleague a couple of years ago. Ironically enough, having bought 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey, I got about halfway through, got distracted, and didn’t actually finish it!

I’ve finally got round to rectifying that slightly abysmal failure, and part of the book struck a chord with me when Covey talks about researching the ‘success literature’ of several hundred years, and the fact that early examples all centred around a principled ‘Character Ethic’ approach, rather than the 20th century methods of quick fixes.

And when we all talk about The Best Practices in Social Media, we all talk about ethics such as honesty, respect, listening, being human etc.

Perhaps some of the quick fixes we’ve used for our individual success and our marketing and advertising really are just momentary blips in the evolution of human communication? Maybe that’s one of the reasons the current economic system is being questioned as much as it is at the moment? And why people like David Parmet are calling for bigger differences and effects to come from social media and networks. Along with the likes of Tim O’Reilly and Shel Isreal (links in David’s post).

Maybe it’s also why the likes of myself and David Cushman are impatiently trying to solve the problems of showing returns on investment in social media.

And whilst writing this I’m reminded of the prioritisation method of looking at the things which are Important but not Urgent, and concentrating on them to avoid them becoming Important and Urgent as much as possible. Too often it appears we’re looking at the short term, and not preventing problems before it becomes crisis management.

So if you fancy becoming more effective as an individual or a company, try 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Combine being effective with reading books on understanding the new economy, how ideas spread, and how to join in, and it seems to me you’ll have caught up on Web 2.0 and the last couple of hundred years!