Effectiveness (not only Efficiency) in a Project

Hi, I'm Andrea Jones, and today I'd like to talk about the difference between being efficient and effective, especially in regards to project management. So efficient means getting tasks done and checking the box. And this is of course important in project management, ensuring that all the team members are efficiently getting their work done. Effective means that the end result will be adopted by the end user. Now, the end user could be multiple stakeholders. It could be the ultimate customer who's paying for whatever new product or service you're developing. It could also be internal people, especially if you're improving a process that's used by internal employees. So end users can be either external or internal, and it's important to know who they are for any given project. So why would a project manager especially maybe be reticent to consider the effectiveness or the end user's stake in the final outcome of the project? I think the primary reason is when the leaders of an organization are also not end user-oriented. So if the leaders are saying things like, hey, how are we going to make sure this works? Hey, what does our customer really want? Hey, what's going to stick within the company? And they're encouraging that conversation. They themselves are promoting that type of thinking and have examples of things they do or things they put in place that consider end users. Then, I think everybody is more likely to be oriented towards end users. But I think the other reasons are very psychological. There's 3 that I can think of why people don't consider effectiveness. One is, you know, we got conditioned, especially in school, to really think about end users. Often in school, and I have kids in school myself, you know, teachers assign homework. It's just get this rubric completed. There's not a whole lot of consideration to whether someone's super extra creative or trying to put something out into the world that may be unique or different. And so kids are just conditioned to check the box, get the homework done, and not really have to think about end users or other people. That's one reason. The second reason is that it takes more time to consider end users. You have to think about it. You have to ask, okay, what exactly are we gonna accomplish with this? What's the goal, the outcome here? You know, how can we make sure that that's really done? And you have to take extra time to think about it. So, it can take longer or it feels like it takes longer. And the third one is it can be uncomfortable. And this is probably the main reason why people don't naturally go out and seek the input of end users because end users can have a lot of different perspectives. And they could be pretty disgruntled and they might take it out on me if I ask them for their feedback or perspective. And that doesn't necessarily feel good or comfortable, right? And I don't know them. We haven't established rapport or maybe we do have some history and it's not that great, right? It's not always easy to put yourself into that situation. And that leads me right back to why leaders really need to exemplify this behavior. If leaders are always thinking about end users and talking about end users, whether they're internal, external, both, then it encourages project managers to do the same. And really leaders need to keep those project managers accountable to think about end users and be the ones ultimately responsible to ensure that the culture in the company is always considering the effectiveness, not only the efficiency, of a project. Thanks for watching.