Efficiently Ineffective (or Stop being good at things that no longer work)

I always laugh when someone says, "It's like moving deck chairs on the Titanic." 

Not to remove the tragedy of the event itself, but the picture of people moving chairs around while the ship sinks—well, it's a doomed exercise at its finest. Move all the deck chairs you want; the boat's not floating. 

Organizations have titanic deck chairs as well. Fueled by busy schedules and seemingly important tasks, we create systems that make it look like we're getting a lot done, without getting to the core of what's essential. 

One organization I worked with was efficient at printing everything. 

I bet you just laughed—because you know an organization like this too. 

Seriously, every conceivable type of document was both digitized and printed. As if it were 1996. 

Someone, probably well-meaning, had an experience where digital records failed them, so paper duplicates became necessary. It was an efficiency exercise. Keep copies, minimize downtime, and move the organization along on a sea of paper. 

And yet, printing everything is the office equivalent of the deck chairs on the Titanic: efficiency in something that is no longer effective.

Another organization I know paid an external data storage firm $10,000 a month to keep secure backups of monthly reporting. This was in addition to duplicate file systems in-house and a cloud server. It was all 'just in case' someone needed to access it.

In 10 years, no one ever contacted the storage firm for copies of a single report stored externally. 

It was a $12 million exercise in efficiency over effectiveness. Deck chairs on the Titanic.

It may be efficient to do something, but is it effective? 

 Where might your organization be prioritizing efficiency over effectiveness?

When are people saying "because we've always done it like this" without knowing why or how it's useful?

What are the Titanic deck chairs of your organization?

Here are some helpful questions to consider when it comes to effectiveness:

What are you doing that's remarkably effective right now? Why do you do it? Does your whole team know how it's impactful?

Imagine you could only focus on one activity; what would it be? Why that one thing?