Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.- Peter F. Drucker

Nicely summed up, Peter. Let's try to do things better though!

It may surprise you, but it was in a student business consultancy where I earned my first money ever. At my university there was an institution founded by students called IBC - Institute for Business Consulting aiming to offer cunsultancy services to the industry.

If life was linear, I'd be a business consultant now. But as you know it's not. So I became a blogging surfer with some consultant background :-)

Yet, one of the best things about knowledge is that nobody can ever take it away from you. So wherever I go, I still have that analytic view on any kind of process I stumble upon.

It's just there.

Here's to the importance of efficiency in business and private life!

Picture provided by pixabay.com

Do it the smart way

As I mentioned previously, I'm neither a fully trained consultant nor have I ever been working in a business consultancy.

However, four years of academic studies in Computer Science and practical experience in our student business consultancy provided me with a certain basic knowledge with regards to process design. The consultancy was part of a national network called 'BDSU' (Bundesverband Deutscher Studentischer Unternehmensberatungen = National Union of German Student Business Consultancies).

Once a year there was a conference (something like Steemfest) where representatives of all these student institutions came together. Since the national union enjoyed a certain reputation in the industry (business consultancy market), the big players sent their consultants to these events in order to speek at the conference and do workshops with the students.

So we had the amazing chance to work with peole from Accenture, Bain & Company, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, McKinsey, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Roland Berger, The Boston Consulting Group and many more.

During these events I learned for life, especially about efficiency!

In the end efficiency is not only interesting from a business point of view. If you are able to save time and money, that may also improve your personal lifestyle.

Now whenever I witness a struggling process in my daily routine, I remember what I learned about efficiency back then.

My favourite daily failing process takes place at the local supermarket in my home town.

To be precise the process is related to their bakery products.

Here's what happens to me over and over again:

1. I choose my favourite bakery product (mostly a donut) from their storage rack and put it into one of the small paper bags designed to be used for these products. These paper bags (which have a small transparent plastic window to look inside) don't have a price tag.
2. I walk to the cash desk where the girl looks through the plastic window inside the paper bag to find out the type of product I chose. Then she considers a printed price list. 
3. Since there are three different types of donuts in their range of bakery products, she always struggles and needs to ask one of her colleagues for help.
4. Then another girl from the supermarket needs to walk to the bakery section in order to find out the price of the donut I chose.
5. Usually it takes these two employees around 5 minutes to find out the price of my product.
6. Hence, I don't buy bakery products when I don't have time, but that's a different story :-) 

To make a long story short: they have a serious process design problem, because there are time killers that are repeated over and over again.

One of my ex bosses would say now: "Shit flows downwards."

There may be different interpretations for that cartoon. One is that management problems evolve top down and not bottom up.

Getting back to my bakery product example: neither the girl at the cash desk causes the problem, nor the person that didn't put a price tag on the bag.

If there are no clear processes designed at a management level, how would the operational level be able to excecute them?

Thank God my local supermarket is not a hospital. They could get into serious trouble though.

However, the owner of that little shop is losing a lot of money every day and probably doesn't even notice that. If he had only some basic idea of process design, he'd do much better.

Anyways, I will continue to buy these donuts even if they steal my time. But that's mainly due to my personal donut addiction, haha :-)

Now what may we learn from these process issues? If we clearly designed standard processes in our lives - these processes that are constantly repeated - and made them the most efficient possible, then we could save a lot of time and money for more interesting and entertaining things.

Efficiency is a wonderful tool to generate extra time and money in the end.

Have a great Friday, steemians!

Marly -

Thanks for your valuable time!
This blog was launched at the end of July 2016
aiming to provide stories for open-minded
people who enjoy living on the edge of their lives,
stepping out of comfort zones, going on adventure,
doing extreme sports and embracing the new.
Welcome to the too-much-energy-blog!

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Original content. Quote found on pinterest.com; birds found on faszinationmensch.com.