S-7 E-1 Effecient vs Effective

In this episode we talk about the many ways we could have came home from the Pirate Ship!  Effective vs efficient!  And what does it mean to us!  When do we prioritize efficiency over effectiveness?  Mass marketing, being better texters and yes we can take the entire family! Find this and many other episodes by category on our website! https://adultingdecrypted.com/episode-search/

Transcript

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Dad 0:00

Effectiveness versus efficiency. Have you guys ever thought much about those two differences? We get into 2024 and we're getting ready to set our goals and plan what we want to do for this coming up year. Interesting situation happened tonight as we were coming home, pirate ship. We went and saw it. We were on a pirate ship tonight. Arrgh. We were still in Cabo. So the question that I had asked myself on our walk home, there was two ways to get home. There's three ways to get home. Probably. We could have taken a car,, we could have rented a taxi. How else could we have got home?

Ashton 1:07

Could've rented a private jet. Swam.

Dad 1:11

Okay. There's, so, there's more than three ways we could've got home. Okay, there's, there's tht two, there's three obvious ways we could've came home when we could've taken a car, when we could've walked on the main roads. Or third, we could have walked on the beach. Which way did we choose to walk? I believe we chose to walk on the beach. Okay, so that brings up the topic for today that I'd like to discuss. Effectiveness versus efficiency. Have you guys ever thought much about those two differences? We get into 2024 and we're getting ready to set our goals and plan what we want to do for this coming up year Gene, you're starting college. Exciting time. Ashton, as you're running your drumline programs. And Gideon, as you're getting ready to finish your senior year, thinking about effectiveness versus efficiencies.

Gene 2:07

I've thought about this a little bit, so I'm interested to hear your take on it. But for me, the main time I started thinking about it was on my missionary service. I'd like to look at a task and be like, okay, is this task effective? And then the next question I'd ask is, okay, is it efficient? The mission can help me. Define the

Dad 2:33

two a little differently Yeah, going to go into some depth for those who don't know the difference between efficient and effective okay, so

Gene 2:41

for me when I think of Effectiveness, it doesn't get the job that you want to done. So how effective if you're trying

Dad 2:53

to talk to people is

Gene 2:55

Doing a certain task effective at doing that is walking around on the streets an effective way to talk to somebody It can be to like another one's like, it's sitting at your home effective at doing it. Not really, because you're not really seeing anybody new. You can do calls, call people up. I mean, we do that all the time. It's effective at what it does. But then efficient is how quickly

Dad 3:25

does it do the thing? Yep. How

Gene 3:28

quickly do you get through those different phone calls? Is it an effective time? Versus just well, that time is effective, but is it efficient

Dad 3:39

at being effective? Good. Thank you. I think that's some good examples. Because as I think on today exactly this morning, somebody wasn't feeling well in our family, so we decided to drive to where we were going. And then tonight, we were about the same location, we decided to walk home. Both of them were effective. Right walking got us there and got us home driving got us there and got a got us home where they both effective Which one was most efficient depends what aspect you're focusing on you're going right where I'm thinking

Gene 4:17

if you're working on like The cost of it walking home is easily the more Efficient if you're talking about speed the car is easily more efficient

Dad 4:30

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Nature of the task, any resource constraints, time sensitivity, balancing act, and the measurement for success. I know that feels like a lot when you're looking at a decision whether am I gonna make an effective decision or if I'm gonna make an efficient decision? Sometimes they don't have to be mutually exclusive, ironically enough, right? In my, in my business world. My goal has always been to focus on efficiencies, it's like, how do I do that same thing faster? How do I get there faster? How do I get it done faster? But what I forget is sometimes I have to be the effective. Is it effective? Especially as it pertains to people, right? If I wrote you an email or a text asking, is that. Efficient. Yeah. Is it always effective? No. Because I suck at

Ashton 5:33

texting. Please call me. Well,

Dad 5:36

that, that's, that's the point I'm driving at on that, right? So the nature of the task. So when do you prioritize effectiveness? What, what task would you think, hey, I really want to be effective at this? I'm

Ashton 5:51

thinking on some of the stuff that I've talked about earlier with managing a new drumline program. One of the aspects that is important is recruiting. And you can be very efficient or you can be very effective. Simply put, I can probably be better at both next year. Because you can efficiently talk to as many people as you want to recruit. But it's harder to effectively recruit people, I think, and so the fastest solution or the more efficient solution is not always the most effective

Dad 6:27

solution. Great, that's a great task. Ashley, especially when you talk about it being your first year, you kind of have to look at it and go, okay was it effective? Did I get the desired result? And then now that I've got that desired result, can I become more efficient at it? Gideon, I think you're spending quite a bit of time at EmTech working on this concept, aren't you? A little bit as far as marketing campaigns. Is it getting the results that I want it to? I think so. So I would think effectiveness is if the task is long term, involves significant decision making there's some processes involved in it, but then efficiency should be done for routine tasks or processes Efficiency actually becomes critical on some of the stuff we do in a daily basis Based on time. one minute shower is probably pretty effective and pretty efficient, yeah But do you always want to make that task just a task? No, because I know it's

Gene 7:35

about the experience. At least, I know sometimes for me, it's relaxing to be in the shower, and I'll just like sit there and be like, and then I can let my mind wander and think about a bunch of different things. That's right. And so then it's effective, but

Dad 7:47

for a different purpose. That's right. Because it helps you sometimes with the mind unwinding, right? That's when you pull out the earbud and instead of listening to music in the shower or listen to something else You might let your mind drift and you come up with new ideas new concept new ideas. Okay, good any other thoughts on the tasks? Nature of the task. Was that pretty clear like tonight the nature of the task was what get home? Was it or was it fence spend family time? It's both

Ashton 8:16

Because we did want to end up here at the end of the night. Agreed.

Dad 8:21

But we didn't have to prioritize efficiency. No. But the process was still effective. Yeah. We still got home to your point. We're not wandering on the beach. Well,

Ashton 8:33

and I think another way to think of like the task is like How dirty is your laundry because you can put it into the wash and speed wash it really quick But if you've been hiking in jeans knee deep in mud It's probably better to do a deep wash while first rinsing it off with a hose in the backyard you know, so when it comes to tasks Yeah, but yeah, you have to consider what all has to be done.

Dad 9:04

It Wouldn't be effective just to throw it right in the wash, which, which is something I'd be prone to do. I'd be like, Oh, it's efficient. Throw it in, but because I never rinsed him, it wasn't even effective. Does that make sense? I like that analogy. Yeah. Cause

Gene 9:22

it can be efficient at getting your clothes out quickly, but it's not, it's not efficient at getting it

Dad 9:30

clean. That's right. Yep. Now, if you're trying to complete a task to make your mom happy, you're like, yeah, I washed my clothes. But it wasn't a vision at all. I did the task, but I wasn't good at it. What resource constraints need to be considered? And, and why would that be? So, on the mission,

Gene 9:51

one of the resource constraint we had was miles that we could drive

Dad 9:55

on a car. Hmm, interesting. And so we can Ashton's over there shaking his head. He remembers those days. I do remember those. And so

Ashton 10:02

it's like, you

Gene 10:03

get let's just say a good solid number of a thousand miles to drive the car in this month. And it could be more effective or more efficient to drive these different places. Cause the point is to get from point a to point B, but you can budget your resources better. So it's like, okay, it would be more to, for speed, this would be more effective or efficient, but because we need these for something else. Biking is going to be more efficient for us later on so that we can do this task and not be constrained on

Dad 10:48

our other tasks. Yep. I like it. That limited resource. I mean, that limited resource is something we probably all have to think about. I think of one of these is time because we don't treat it as a limited resource. Sometimes it really is based on the day that you've got a big task to deliver. You've promised something and you're like, it doesn't. I've got a very limited resource. I'm going to be very efficient write this paper because I'm down to minutes now to get it done. But sometimes you get to be on that paper because it might not have been as effective as it needed to be. I got to be,

Ashton 11:28

that's awesome. Yeah. Hey, I'm

Dad 11:30

down for that. You had classes, right? C's get degrees. But it doesn't lead to deeper learning all the time. So, so I think college is a real interesting study of efficiency versus effectiveness, but enough about that. So if you have an abundance of resource, effectiveness might take precedence. That's, that's relationships, right? So tonight we had plenty of time. So effectiveness, being able to spend time together, look at Orion's belt with mom, you know, take some pictures, laugh about you guys. Getting splashed or you guys laughed at us. I can't know when both ways everybody got wet except Sabrina Serena saw it coming I jumped out of the way Okay, so resource constraints time sensitivity times an interesting one because Sometimes we we get very wrapped up in how fast we can get something done But we don't take the time to step back and go. Okay. Is this effective? It might be an effective in the moment Am I even being, you know, because before you can decide that you have to step back and say is, is what I'm trying to do going to be effective. Trying to think of an example of that right off the top of my head. Anybody got anything they could help the listener with? Something I thought of

Gene 12:53

was, if you're trying to invite a bunch of new people to a gathering. Say like, hey, we want to get as many people as we can to this spot. It can be really Effective at giving every single person the exact same thing You just have to type the number one and it entered it autofills everything that you need to send to them. It's a giant Robotic responses to everything that they have. It's very efficient you only have to type one letter on the keyboard and it'll be all done, but It may not be a very effective because some people could look at that and be like, well, it seems very robotic not very personable It's

Dad 13:37

It's not effective for me. Yeah, I like that, Gene, because really what you did is you mass invite, and everybody sees that invite, but they don't feel special. So they don't necessarily come and, and join your party. And that's where I think some of that social media targeting, getting that you're working on, and trying to figure out, How do I target a specific group to not only be efficient, because I don't want to run a ton of ads, but how can I be effective as well? Is that a fair observation with what you're studying? Yeah,

Gideon 14:08

that's fair. I loved your example, Jean, but I think sometimes it's also important to think about your goal with the action that you want. So it's it's effective if it does what you want it to do. I know that sounds super simple and it is, it really is. But like, you don't need to spend a whole bunch of time on something. If it's not necessarily directly connected with what you want to achieve. If what you want to achieve is getting people to come to your seminar, which is what the email invite that June was talking about. If that's what you want and sending an auto respond email to everybody gets you your 30 percent that you wanted out of that to come to, your seminar, then it's enough, then it's effective. So I think it. It could be important to highlight the differences in that

Dad 15:01

as well. Yeah. And that leads into we want to talk about is that balancing act. Because both are a lot of times necessary, right? I don't believe, right? I'm kind of biased here. I don't believe that you can have an effective process. Excuse me. I don't believe that you can have an efficient process that isn't effective. Because in a business, if I built an efficient process, but it didn't lead me to what I wanted it to, then is it really an efficient process or am I just wasting more time? Is that where you're leading with that?

Ashton 17:37

I have a story for this. Please. It's very short. I was the most efficient mopper. At Watergarden Cinemas in Pleasant Grove when I worked there. Only after I had quit and to go to school and I come back and visited and was saying hi to all my manager friends. Did one of the managers be like, bro, no one's allowed to mop like you. And I was like, why is that? He's like, cause you always got done so fast, but there was a reason why. Because I had figured out how to dunk the mop and mop basically. Half the theater three or four rows of the theater without having to re dump the mop because if you don't wring it out you just go across that top row the water starts all going downhill and so you can get through four or five rows really really pretty quick and I had a pretty good mopping motion so I was very very efficient at it but he didn't let anyone else mop like that because

Dad 18:39

They'd, they'd

Ashton 18:39

prefer people just to take forever, I guess.

Dad 18:41

I don't know. But, but, really was it effective? Did it get the skew off the ground?

Ashton 18:47

I think so. There was a couple, there was a couple opportunities where people disagreed.

Dad 18:52

In his view, you might have had an efficient, and you were saving him, me, you were saving him money. Right. But you weren't necessarily effective. Right. Good example. I do think it is a balancing act, right? You need to know how can I be efficient and how can I be successful. And then Gideon, I think you could spend a few more minutes on measuring success. Give us some thoughts on measuring success.

Gideon 19:17

I think it's just more of, of what I talked about. The way you measure success is if it did what you want it to do. Shout out to Alex, my marketing teacher, cause that's really the whole basis of marketing. If what you are trying to do, as in get people to your website, if the action that you take gets people to your website, it does not necessarily matter what action that you take. 'cause it got your goal done. So,

Dad 19:49

Well, did you, I, I would consider that to be an outcome focused metrics. You're, you're looking, you're looking at an outcome, like, what was my outcome? Yeah, because

Gideon 20:03

an example that he has taught us is at a company They're redesigning their logo and the CEO really loves this one design Maybe he created maybe like his daughter or something drew it up But he loves this design and then another person makes another design and they do a B testing Which is where they send some to one person Like one group of people, the other two, another group of people and see which they like better. And even though the CEO really loves this one design, the people like the other one and the other one is more effective. So it's not necessarily focused on what you want, but like you said, the

Dad 20:53

outcome, right? So on an outcome focused metrics effectiveness. It is the most important part. In my opinion. It goes back to what Gene's saying. He goes, hey I want to get people in seats. I want people to my invite. Effectiveness. I A B tested it. Is that efficient? Not necessarily. But is it effective? Yeah, because it allows you to hit your audience.

Gideon 21:21

Is this pretty much a conversation about quantity over quality?

Dad 21:25

No. I don't think so because I'm not saying you have to throw a bunch of stuff at them. But you're taking the time and you're looking at strategy and you're contemplating. How can I make this work the best, so you're willing to take the time energy and effort

Ashton 21:40

well, I was gonna say another another thing I think about versus that makes it not quality over quantity is part of the challenge when you teach in Ensemble these percussion ensembles that I teach that are competitive is the season lasts You three four months at most and a lot of the ensembles that I work with you are teaching kids that are brand new to music or very inexperienced and so you have to get them the instruction that they need in order to play at the level they need to play at to be competitive And if you throw too much at them, nothing sticks if you give them all this amazing quality Like deeply thought out slow taught instruction to be very effective You're not gonna get far enough to get where you need to be. So you kind of have to find the balance Between what's the most effective of instruction I can give in the most efficient way So that I can merge these two ideas in college we spend forever talking about like the deepest technical, you know, how you play this thing, what's happening to your pointer finger as you're playing this whatever the heck. And when you go to teach high school kids, it's what is your hand doing to hold the stick. Great. Think of it in two parts, rather than, you know, all five fingers sort of stuff. And there's just different strategies that I've started to figure out work quickly. But also teach like the true core principles effectively

Dad 23:24

you're hitting on measuring success. You went back to balancing, right? The balancing of the two and how you do it. But on an outcome focused metrics, you're still looking at effectiveness. okay, is what I'm teaching them going to work? Is this working? Am I working? Is it making sense? But then when you have to go to process focused measurements. This, this is totally dependent on if success is measured by how well a task are executed and resources are utilized. Efficiency becomes a focal point. So warm ups, you probably drive for efficiency. You're like, okay, look, I know they're effective because they work. Now, how fast can I get it done? Can I get through my warmups in five minutes, 10 minutes, six minutes, 3.8 minutes? Drill that to where you go. Okay. Now I've, I've effectively used my time. We're not wasting time in between examples. We're not wasting time in my cadence, we're getting in, we're getting started. Now I can go to the outcome focus metrics, which is where I can teach them and take the time to go through the effectiveness. So getting your point on. The ABC testing and some of those processes, you're going, Hey, it's going to be effective when we launch it, but then when we're ready to go through and just deliver that, we're going to fly through this and we need to make sure that we utilize all of our resources. We need to hit all of our links. We copy and paste what we can. We modify very little. Right? We blitz this out. Is that, is that clear to you? Does that make a little bit more sense as we've talked through it? Yeah, I think so. And then the human side is always an interesting part because I truly believe that the human experience Yeah, there's time that efficiency matters, but I truly believe that effectiveness is the most important part Is you're working with on your relationships into 2024. It's not all, and I'm guilty, right? How many texts have I sent you guys that was just garbage? I mean, maybe one? Maybe,

Ashton 25:38

maybe two at most.

Dad 25:40

I don't want to be hyper. I haven't texted you guys at all since we're out of cell service most of the time right now. Yeah, I was going

Gene 25:45

to ask, what's the time period? Is this like one day, a

Dad 25:49

week? Well, the best one was, I think, getting ready for this trip, I texted something about, yes, I remember this text message, no family gifts, you were

Ashton 25:59

telling us not to do family gifts.

Dad 26:01

Yeah. But the way I wrote it is pretty comical, atrocious this is what I wrote. Hey, I was thinking no family. Yes. Cause we're in Mexico. Is that what ever, ever, what everyone's thinking? Then we can just do nice stuff for each other there. The last sentence was great. And, and Sabrina said what do you mean by no family? I still want to keep my family and hang out with you guys. And then mom in one sentence solved the whole problem. He meant no family gifts for Christmas. Effective and efficient is what mom delivered on that. So sometimes you have to stop, take a breath, think about effective and efficient to be successful.

Gene 26:48

Those points, it's about not just is it effective or efficient in one of the areas, you want to see how efficient it is in pretty much all of those areas is when it gets to the, some of those more real life things. Say it's just a sheet of math homework. You could do it as. efficient as possible, just have like a huge screen with a bunch of different answers on it, and then just write it out and boom, it's done. But it wasn't really efficient at helping you learn it. It wasn't really efficient at saving the resources to help you actually learn the concept. And so it really was okay, I was efficient in this small minuscule area, but it wasn't really efficient overall. Which goes back to how you measure the success, which goes back to the balance, which means time and resources.

Dad 27:52

Thank you, Gene.