As part of the establishment of the I.C.E. Training brand, I will be explaining the three tenets of the company, specifically Integrity, Consistency & Efficiency, and especially what they mean to me in three short essays. This edition: Efficiency.
 
In 2004, I had the following in a hand-out for a Patrol Officer Survival Course:
 

Efficiency is the key to our response to a violent attack:

Effectiveness is Required.

Respond As fast as possible.

Use the least amount of Effort & Force Necessary.
 

I still believe that the principles expressed in that handout are the keys to a practical understanding of tactical efficiency. The less time, effort and force you use to be effective, the better.
 
There are other types of efficiency that we must consider as well.
The efficiency of training is one type. Are we getting the most out of our training time, effort and money? Training at one location is very convenient and efficient for the instructor, but it may not always be the best option for the student. It may be more efficient for a student to get a group of like minded individuals in their home town together to share the expenses of one or two instructors traveling to them and running a course. Of course, some programs require specific facilities in order to be effective.
It is important to remember that without effectiveness, there is no efficiency. Doing something fast does not mean you are necessarily achieving a goal. Understanding that efficiency is objective and not subjective (like “easy” or “quick”) is incredibly important.
Take a look at this excerpt from the Combat Focus Shooting book:
 
Your efficiency level is an individual measurement. In Combat Focus Shooting, the underlying question to all of our skill sets is “Can I do that more efficiently?” As noted earlier, Efficiency includes effectiveness in the definition. We need to accomplish a task, but we want to accomplish it with the minimal amount of energy, effort and time. For someone who is very athletic and who has practiced a lot with a particular weapon, a Critical Incident Reload may be completed in under 2 seconds, someone else may take 3 or 4 seconds to complete the same process. The truth is that without more information we cannot judge the efficiency of either person. The first person is certainly “fast,” the second is clearly “slower.” Those types of descriptions have nothing to do with efficiency. If the first person is rotating the gun so that the top of the slide is pointed to their weak side and “sling-shoting” the slide with the weak hand, they are clearly not being efficient and could get even faster. Conversely, the second person might be doing everything right and not be capable of going any faster.
Recently, I had a conversation with a newly certified Combat Focus Instructor about the difference between “efficient” and “easy.” Easy is a subjective term, while efficient is an objective, quantifiable, term. One person may find something easy to do while another may find the same task difficult. Natural ability, amount of practice, comfort level and countless other factors go into the differences between easy and difficult. Whether or not the task they are trying to accomplish is efficient, however, can be judged objectively. How much energy is being used? How many extraneous steps, if any, are there in the process? Can it be done in less time (by both participants)? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your practice or familiarity or comfort with a certain process automatically makes it efficient just because you consider it easy. Regardless of how fast you can do it, “sling-shoting” the slide is not the strongest nor most efficient way to get the slide into or out of battery. The overhand method, shown at right, is superior.
Your shooting skills are your skills. Lack of practice, poor equipment choices, clumsiness, mental deficiency or techniques that add extraneous steps or which don’t work well with the body’s natural responses to fear all work against you being fast. Efficiency is the part of the process of controlling these things. If you think slower than the guy next to you, don’t train and are generally uncoordinated, you are not going to be the fastest shooter in the class. You don’t have to make it worse on yourself by choosing poor equipment and techniques. Of course, the smartest, most coordinated person in the group is similarly hampered by poor gear and technique decisions. It is more efficient to use a gun without a separately operated manual safety in a defensive situation. That certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t be “fast” with a single action automatic used properly. It certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t be efficient if your department has issued you a double action pistol, but told you that you have to carry it with the de-cocker in the “safe” position. In both cases, however, you could change the gear or the technique and be faster/more efficient. Martial philosopher, Bruce Lee, in response to the question “How can I be a master fighter?” listed 5 components including the “mastering of economic mechanics” (Little, 1997). Regardless of how you express it, efficiency is imperative for you to maximize your skill level under any given set of circumstances and combative skills are no exception.
 
My Office: Mac dictionary defines “Efficiency” as a noun meaning:
 
The ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort.
 
In the search for a guiding principle for a company, one of the cornerstones of a training program or a measure of the value of a technique, I.C.E. relies on the idea of Efficiency to keep us looking for the best techniques and tactics and to present them in the most direct way possible to as many students as possible regardless of tradition or inertia. Efficiency in our approach to program development, instructor selection and course execution will keep I.C.E. among the most progressive training companies in the industry.