Efficiency in reality;

              Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 59
Efficiency in Reality
IT was a saying of Napoleon that every
soldier carried in his knapsack the baton
of a marshal. So true is this that all who
set foot on the path of business advancement
feel the desire for a larger opportunity and
the possibility of an increased efficiency.
This word "efficiency" suffers from many
disagreeable connotations which have grown
up around it. The conception of a machine­like
uniformity—the precision of an auto­maton—
applied to human effort has at
times overshadowed the real and indespens-able
good in an intelligent efficiency. For
intelligent it must be first of all; without
a mind in control the labor of a man's hand
is so much lost motion.
For our purpose, efficiency may be rough­ly
defined as the power to do the work
before us in the best possible way, in the
least possible time, and with the least possi­ble
effort. In short, it is the ability to find
the best way of arriving at the best results.
A good piece of work is an achievement in
itself; when it has been accomplished with
the least possible expenditure of time and ef­fort
it is a product as nearly perfect as
human skill can make it, and the man whose
work it is has felt a joy in the doing that is
denied to a fumbling or less finished crafts­man.