Work vs effort

It took a while, but I finally came up with my smart-aleck reply to "Folks, that's why it's called work."

No, that's why it's called effort. Folks, there's a difference.

If I were an employer, I'd want more than effort out of people, I'd want results for that effort. And the most results for the least amount of effort -- folks, that's called efficiency.

Tom Gilbert, one of the greats when it comes to human performance, talks about the cult of behavior. That's when you mistake the effort (the behavior) for the results, as in "He's a hard worker -- he stays late every night!"

Maybe he's just inefficient or slow.

But here's the real crux of the problem: is the solution to inefficiency to get people to want to be more efficient (incentives), teach them to be more efficient (training), fire the bum and get a more efficient person, or to look for the root cause, first?