Efficacy and Efficiency

An army was marching through a thick Amazon forest. The trees were so huge that even the sky was not visible. There were two separate groups marching relentlessly. The Captain of the first group called his Lieutenant and asked him to climb a tree to check the progress. The Captain of the second group did likewise with his Lieutenant. They marched on. After 2 hours, the exercise of climbing the tree to check the progress was repeated.

The first group's Lieutenant slid down from the tree, saluted the Captain and said, " Sir, we have covered a lot of ground"

However, the second group's Lieutenant gave this feedback, " Sir, we have come a long way since the last time, but sir, we are going in the wrong direction"

You must have noticed the fundamental difference here. The first lieutenant was more concerned about the distance covered during the 2 hours rather than think about the end objective of reaching the destination. Most of the managers and workers are like that. They go on harping about how they have worked hard without realizing that they are not contributing anything to achieving the corporate objectives. The second lieutenant was quite conscious of his objectives and was prepared to give a proper feedback that led to mid term corrections leading to the group reaching the destination. A manager becomes a leader when he does this.

Bhagavath Gita describes this beautifully by differentiating between Efficacy and Efficiency.

Efficacy (or Effectiveness) is DOING THE RIGHT THING, while
Efficiency is DOING THINGS RIGHT.

You need both Efficacy and Efficiency. But efficiency without efficacy will lead you astray.