Efficiency is the measurement of output divided by input. If you can increase the fire without having to shovel more fuel into it or keep the same fire going with less fuel, then your efficiency has increased. Efficiency is basically mileage - how much can you get from how little? Every manager wants more output without having to pay for it. Deliver improvements in efficiency to your boss and be a hero.

How do we improve our efficiency? The answer lies first in effectiveness: we must begin with the end in mind. We must understand the results we are hoping to get and set ourselves a goal of reaching those results. We must make a plan to reach the goal. We must execute the plan. We must measure how we are doing along the way. If we reach our goal, we can then advertise it and declare victory.

Improving efficiency is a skill. Skills are not inborn, native talents - they are merely steps to perform a task. If you can learn the steps, you will have the skill. If you can start off improving the efficiency of one thing in your work life, you can do it with any other.

Ten Steps to Improving Efficiency

1. Identify a task with measurable product (hint: everything can be measured)
2. Measure your outputs or inputs across a past time period (count outputs across a year, quarter, or month, man hours required per output, number of people required to produce output, cost per output, total number of days required per output). You don’t have to measure both inputs and outputs - just one or the other and create a division equation: inputs/outputs = efficiency
3. Measure the inputs into the task ()
4. Set a goal. Pick one:
   • Reduce the inputs during the next time period
   • Increase the output during the next time period
5. Brainstorm ways to reach the goal
6. Plan
7. Execute
8. Measure inputs and outputs again
9. Document trends
10. Succeed or change tactics

Example: Mike’s Business Requirements

Mike is the business analyst in a software company. He writes the business requirements - the documents that state what the project team is hoping that the software will do when the project is complete. He’s stumped about how he could improve his efficiency. He doesn’t know how to measure business requirements, and he doesn’t know how to measure his inputs.

Mike’s boss has decided to give him some help identifying measurable inputs and outputs. They come up with the following list of inputs:

• Number of man hours required to author and get approvals
• Number of days required to author and receive approvals
• Number of iterations of requirements needed before approval

It’s not exactly rocket science, but they both agree there would be some benefits if they could improve the situation. They decide to measure the number of days required front to back to finish requirements. They also agree that Mike will not achieve this by working longer hours. The goal is to reduce the number of 8 hour days that Mike works to finish up a business requirement, get it approved, and move on to something else.

As long as inputs remain fixed, increasing output over time
shows increases in efficiency.

Now that they have something to measure, Mike gathers some historical data. He looks in his documents folder where he stores BR documents and examines the dates that they were created. He counts that he wrote four in January, three in February, and three in March. He now has a measurement to beat: 3.3 per month. That is his current rate of efficiency.

Mike meets with a couple of project managers, and together they come up with some places where there is slack time after the BR is published and before it is approved. Mike decides to reduce this time. He and his boss enlist the help of a developer to modify the BR template so that when it is closed, it asks the read to approve or reject the document right away. After this change is implemented, Mike measures how long his BR’s are taking end to end, and after a month, he finds that he can now author and deliver 5 per month in June and 6 per month in July.

Mike is now set to examine other possible efficiencies in his work that he could exploit and report on. At the end of the year, before his annual review, Mike types up a single sheet of paper with a list of the efficiency projects he led, successfully delivered, and the improvements the company realized in terms of extra work capacity, saved money, and saved man hours.

You Can Improve Your Efficiency and Position Yourself for Leadership

This is just a little story I wrote to explain the steps above, but don’t make the mistake of thinking this isn’t real. This is real. I’ve done it myself. Anyone working any job anywhere can measure what they do. The people who say their work cannot be measured are wrong. All work can be measured. The trick is to not be too much of a perfectionist. You do not need a degree from MIT to take your job from completely unmeasured to measured.

Once you learn how to identify measurable things that are not too hard to measure, you will see opportunity all around you. That opportunity is the chance to do something more than just your job. Whether you work in a call center taking phone calls, in a lube shop changing oil, or as a project manager for a big company - your boss will be thrilled if you can measure your own performance, regularly benchmark yourself, and ask them for help making improvements.

Ever wonder why someone is selected for management? It is because they not only did their jobs, they helped the boss with her work as well. Your boss is crying into his soup every night wondering why some pour soul won’t help him do his job better. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist or perfect - even baby steps can make a tremendous difference and put you in the top 1%.