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Ever wonder what’s the difference between business efficiency and productivity?
You’ve probably heard that the terms “efficiency” and “productivity” mean more or less the same thing. Most people believe that they are synonyms, but it is not quite correct.
Efficiency has a wider meaning than productivity – yet a bigger impact on your business!
Words have an impact because we give them meaning.
The word “efficiency” was first used in the late 14th century to describe the relationship between inputs and outputs. It came from the Latin word “efficientia,” which translates to “effectiveness.”
On the other hand, the term “productivity” originated in the early 19th century from the word “produce.” It described the rate of output per unit of input. Productivity is a measure of how effective an organization is in converting inputs into outputs.
So, efficiency is a state or quality of being efficient, while productivity is a measure of efficiency.
In other words, efficiency is a static concept, while productivity is a dynamic one.
Stick around because, in this video, we’ll explore the different aspects of business efficiency vs productivity so you know how focusing on efficiency makes you more productive!
Video Transcription:
[00:00:00] Business efficiency and productivity are two words that are being used a lot lately. And it makes me really excited. In today’s video, I want to walk you through the difference between business efficiency and productivity and how business efficiency can make you more productive. Before we dive into the nitty gritty of business efficiency versus productivity and all the things, I want to get a couple of basics out of the way.
[00:00:31] Now, when it comes to the words business efficiency and productivity, they’re actually just words and they only get meaning because we put meaning to them. Let me explain what I mean by that. Now, when we think of the B word, which I’m not allowed to speak out, or are we going to get into YouTube jail? Now the B word is actually just a female dog, wolf, fox, and I think Otters too. That’s what the B word is used for until humans picked up the B word and used it as an insult. And nowadays, the B word can be an insult, or it can be a show of respect or a compliment or yeah, kind of thing. It matters what meaning we give the word and the same is happening with business efficiency and productivity.
[00:01:24] Now the connotation of the word productivity is this getting things done, checking things off your list, the whole three things you are paying attention to, and then you’re adding another five and another 10. And this list that never gets done. It is the meaning of being productive, getting things done and checking things off your list.
[00:01:48] Now this connotation, this meaning of the word productivity often puts us what we call an NLP on the effect side. It is from the outside, something determining how we feel, what we do and what gets done. That client is calling, we need to take care of that. That book? We need to take care of that. It is an external influence.
[00:02:10] That’s coming to us and says, you have to do this and you put it on your list and you get it done if you are being productive. Now, the connotation and the meaning of business efficiency, on the other hand, simply by the word efficient puts you at the side of costs, meaning you are taking action to decide what is happening with that productivity list that you just wrote? Does it align with your business goals? Can we potentially get this done more efficient? And I’m not just talking about outsourcing or handing it off. I’m talking about automating things. There is so many things that have to happen in our business on the admin side.
[00:02:53] That I can tell you right now, if you pay attention to that and you are now suddenly way more efficient and therefore more productive in the tasks you aren’t getting done. Now, how can you focus on being more efficient in your business to become more productive? Not only do you become more productive, you are also easily and sustainably able to scale your business.
[00:03:18] And girl, you can have a vacation. So how do we really focus on business efficiency? One of the first thing that you want to look for is systems. Now, I know not everybody thinks like me. I see systems where other people see chaos. The moment you put efficiency in your business on value level number one, you want to run your business efficiently and you will adjust accordingly, making that decision, already puts that in the forefront of your goal. And you will start seeing systems. Now, if you’re like Yvi, I really still don’t see systems. Start paying attention to the tasks you repeatedly do. For example, content creation.
[00:04:02] I am a full-time content creator. Courses, YouTube videos, social media, blog posts. There’s a lot of admin work that goes into, and I am working with my VAs right now to optimize this, to have a specific schedule so we are not stressing with last minute content. Meaning, okay, cool. In the best case scenario, this is getting done on the date, by that person and then this and then that, and then that. There is a system. There is a workflow.
[00:04:31] Write those out. Really start paying attention to it. And once you have those systems, look at what you can automate. I’ve told you in videos before, don’t automate before you actually started using this stuff manually. Or you’re not going to be efficient. You’re just going to be a mess in your business.
[00:04:48] Secondary. And I talked about this in another video. I’m going to link it for you up there and at the end of the video and in the description, niche down by your systems. What do I mean by that? And I’m going to dive deeper into that in the video I link for you. You don’t need to niche down by realtor or social media managers or agencies.
[00:05:09] No. What is the system you are running? What is the process you are running? If you can replicate that process that you did for the realtor client, you can go totally into another niche and do the same thing for social media manager. Who you do it for doesn’t matter. Your back-end system and workflow is what makes you efficient, which now allows you to easily duplicate that workflow and process, which means you sustainably can scale your business because you niche down by your system, paying attention to business efficiency and getting your systems down.
[00:05:45] Yeah. Now, with all of this, let’s wrap it up with business efficiency means you are paying attention to systems, workflows, automations, and how you can get really clear on what’s happening in your business and how. Productivity, in the connotation of the word, just means checking off things. So paying attention to business efficiency -actually allows you to be more productive and scale your business because you are taking what you build right here, paying attention to business efficiency, and you duplicate the process.
[00:06:19] That’s all scaling a business is about – duplicating the process. And if you’re still wondering what I was talking about, niching down based on your systems and workflows, I got a video for you right here, that dives deeper into how you sustainably scale by niching down based on your workflows and processes.
[00:06:41] And if you haven’t subscribed yet, you are missing out because we are really deep diving into this topic of business efficiency here coming up, and you don’t want to miss it.
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