Created so much wealth in the past decades, from Google and Intel to Starbucks and Microsoft, did not get where they are by focusing on efficiency. They focused on creation wealth for their customers. Why, then, do most companies worship at the altar of efficiency?
It is time to replace efficiency with effectiveness (or better yet, efficaciousness), and begin to measure what counts, rather than counting for the sake of counting. Cost accounting simply cannot be allowed to continue its dominance in controlling a company because it has little correlation to, and is not an accurate measurement of, the external results and wealth that knowledge workers create for their customers.