T5 – Efficiency

The Compass is a draft now. Please submit your comments in the comment section below or email them to us: info@omimo.org
The review stage ends on 2025-11-01.

Safeguarding, resilience, and efficiency are needed because you want to get certain results via adapting solutions. With efficiency, you want to make the implementation of the solution faster.

Speed vs. direction

Remember that speed is only positive when you’re heading in the right direction. Your direction is set in the solutions category and adjusted in the adaptation category. This is important to remember because some leaders focus so much on speed that they forget about direction.

Governance

One of the contributing factors to efficiency is how some decisions should be escalated, because escalations usually add delays. While you should try to optimize the process, the goal is not always to remove escalations because they’re one of your safeguards and a way to ensure that you’re moving in the right direction. Don’t sacrifice direction for speed.

Shorter path vs. higher speed

You can achieve desired outcomes faster in two ways:

• Shortening the path: You increase business value when you achieve the same outcome with a different output that requires a smaller investment.
• Increasing speed: With a certain output, it’s usually possible to move faster without sacrificing quality and endangering the outcomes.

You should benefit from both of the above methods. The first one is the subject of the solutions and adaptation categories, and the second one is what we aim for in the efficiency category.

Behaviors

The following are the leader’s desirable behaviors related to efficiency:

1. You don’t mistake efficiency with overwork, pressure, and busyness.
2. You avoid clutter and waste by focusing on the essential aspects of the subject.
3. You use publicly available methods and make them your own instead of reinventing the wheel.
4. You ensure that when a type of work is repeated, it’s done a little better than the previous times.
5. You consider automating repetitive work or structuring its workflow when justifiable.
6. You learn about various types of software packages that can be helpful in your role and use them effectively.
7. You control your emotions under stress and other strong stimuli and limit their impact on your decisions and behaviors.
8. You delegate work to the right people and get results without micromanaging them.
9. You ensure that everything important is documented and stored in a way that makes it easy to retrieve in the future.
10. You structure and present information in a way that makes it easy for relevant people to understand.
11. You speak and write clearly, completely, and yet concisely, to avoid misunderstandings, friction, and time-wasting.
12. You spread your attention and energy among things based on their importance.
13. You improve efficiency by limiting the amount of work done in parallel.
14. You make sure deliverables are fully completed before closing them.
15. You always prepare yourself for what’s coming, from a simple meeting to a big project to a crisis.
16. You are punctual, to avoid wasting time and mental energy and to respect yourself and others.