“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
Doing the Wrong Thing Well
From Peter F. Drucker, Managing for Business Effectiveness, Harvard Business Review (May 1963), the article where Drucker draws his effectiveness-versus-efficiency distinction. The line is Drucker’s diagnostic name for the failure mode the distinction is meant to prevent: high performance on the wrong activity.
The conventional managerial focus is on doing things right. Drucker’s argument is that the prior question (am I doing the right things?) is the one that matters more, and the one managers routinely skip because it has no procedure attached. An efficiency gain on the wrong work doesn’t shrink the waste; it scales it.