"lesser effort" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You could use it to refer to a degree of effort that is smaller, or of lower intensity, than some other effort. For example: "Even with the lesser effort, the project was completed successfully."
"You Shall Know Our Velocity" is a lesser effort, but entirely honorable and ultimately persuasive.
It was a compilation released by Capitol Records in the United States without the Beatles' direct involvement; it was not "a lesser effort by the Beatles".
Lily Tuck's "Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived" is another lesser effort by another talented writer known for her spare, lapidarist style.
In this context, consistency implies obtaining consistent results for the same problem, reliability implies a reduction in the variability in the results while practicality implies the completion of the process with lesser effort.
Bloomberg administration officials said there had been no change in policy in dealing with the homeless, and no lesser effort to disperse them from the streets than under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
A surprisingly trivial piece, "The High Water Mark" is a lesser effort by Mr. Clawson, a talented 29-year-old playwright whose "Dangers of Electric Lighting" was first produced by Luna Stage in 2011.
Back then, although lesser efforts would have been tolerated, the place served decent food.
But even for those lesser efforts, $15-an-hour 15-an-hour 15-an-hourcampaignsrearoundverage.
That shouldn't, however, be taken to mean that the poems here are all unformed, lesser efforts.
Winning his first Academy Award this year for one of his lesser efforts, "If I Didn't Have You," didn't persuade him to play the song on Wednesday.
After several lesser efforts, the couple came up with Where Are You Now, a lush ballad that reached No 1 in April 1965.
