Does efficiency always means to be fast?   

The attempt to counteract market speed with efficiency – standardization and automation are the means of choice here – entails the risk of losing flexibility with respect to fast-changing market requirements. Rigid procedural structures do not leave any room for exceptions or creative problem solutions. In extreme cases, efficiency can kill effectiveness. A company works with maximum efficiency and tremendous speed as it shoots past the demands being made by a dynamic market.    

Solving problems takes time, but assures fast achievement of goals

What is to be done? When operations become hectic, one quickly loses sight of the goal. But this is hardly the way to improve a competitive position. The use of energy and resources is dissipated without effect. Something else is required if the dynamics of the market are to be given due consideration and imultaneously internal stability is to be maintained.   

An excursion into psychology may prove helpful. The term used here is “cognitive flexibility”, which is regarded as the decisive element of intellectual abilities when actively solving problems. A problem is characterized by the initial situation, the target situation, and the obstacles which must be overcome. Problem solving is the transformation of the initial situation into the ­target situation by overcoming the obstacles. The Tower of ­Hanoi is in this context an established puzzle used to test or train this ability. A conical tower consisting of a number of disks, ­stacked according to size, must be moved to another rod. The new ­tower must have the same sequence of disks as the original (see chart).

The following rules must be followed: only one disk may be moved at a time, and a larger disk may never be placed on top of a smaller one. The solution involves building the ­tower completely in the middle first, then taking it down again. Only then is it possible, as is set in the task, to move the tower to the right. The problem which must be solved here is a transformation problem; this means that the initial situation must be changed to the target situation by means of the correct sequence of a number of intermediate steps. The difficulty in solving the task is that you must first move away in your thinking patterns from the actual aim so that you can ultimately achieve precisely this goal.