Surprised? As you know, I am the efficiency advocate. So why talk about Inefficiency? Well, because efficiency may not always be a desirable thing. I want to explore this side as well – can inefficiency be useful, desirable, or intentional. Would you like to be inefficient or efficient? In fact, the definition of what exactly inefficient means – in work context – is ambiguous or unclear.
Did not find much information of this topic. Most discussions about efficiency pertain to production, manufacturing or highly process oriented industries.
Contents
Unconventional topic
We talk about the efficiency (or the lack of it) in the context of unstructured work. This blog is dedicated to efficient usage of Microsoft 365 platform.
That is why we are conducting an open discussion (or debate) about the role of Inefficiency. It is called FYI = “Fortunately, You’re Inefficient!”
Why “Fortunately”? Many connotations here. Either you KNOW that you are inefficient or you don’t know it.
Inefficiency is bliss!
If you don’t know you are inefficient and are able to survive despite it, that means you are in an environment where everyone around is equally or more inefficient – you are fortunate!
If you know that you are inefficient, what is the next logical thing you will do? You will try to become more efficient. Right? Surprisingly, the answer is not always YES.
Is it possible that you know that you are inefficient and want to remain inefficient? Continue to use the sub-optimal process / method / way of working?
Of course, whether you know it or not, inefficiency has its disadvantages.
Intentional Inefficiency
Why would you want it that way? Is it useful to you? Beneficial? Profitable? Or you are just lazy and want to remain inefficient?
Another aspect which is usually not discussed is that can efficiency be bad for you? It does not seem likely. But it is true. We will discuss many situations where efficiency will go against you. Technically it does not make sense, but human life is not technical. There are emotions involved. We do not understand the technology behind emotions yet. But we will explore the side effects of being efficient and see what remedial action can be performed.
In this case the definition of inefficient is like saying it is “efficiently inefficient!”
Is it ethical to be inefficient?
Ethical considerations are also involved. If I am offering a service which is inefficient (knowingly) and customers are paying for it – is it ethical? You think this must not be happening? Every business wants to improve their processes and optimize the efficiency. Agreed. But in certain cases, you DO NOT want to do that. We will discuss such examples and explore whether this is ethical and fair from the customer point of view.
Join us for the open discussion
I hope you find this discussion useful. Click here for registration.
Post your thoughts, queries, ideas as comments. We will try to cover them if found to be globally relevant.
