Inefficiency is part of the work
In a recent post, Seth defined process as “the investment we make in inefficiency now to prevent errors from costing us later.”
What this definition implies is that we know the steps that are needed to lead us to the hoped for result. Our ability to take all these steps without hindrance would then be called efficient.
The reason one would invest in inefficiency at a given moment then is that we know that some of the steps will not always happen as expected.
Where such an approach works well and can be automated is where a tested process exists, and unknown details may be excluded.
The situation is quite different when we don’t know what “efficient” would look like and is replaced by an idea of what we want. Even more so, if we don’t have the power to enforce a process that leads to what we want.
Whenever our goal is to establish a process that leads us to what we want, it will require a high investment in inefficiency now.
This is true when we work on something alone and have to discover how it works but can’t try all available solutions, that’s when our learning requires reflection and evaluation. It is also true when we need others to help us get to what we want, such a situation can feel chaotic as we may find ourselves confronted with very different perceptions of how to act and what is considered reasonable by others. Instead of being able to apply how we would proceed we need to learn how to make the process compatible with the other. And instead of simply moving toward our objective, we have to figure out how different objectives can become compatible.
It’s nothing really new. What will have changed in the last centuries, is how much time it requires. Quite often it can be more time than before and certainly as expected. It results from a necessity to work across cultures, which can be assumed to be the case in most situations. Consider how cultures differ from profession to profession, from group to group, and naturally from culture to culture.
We come from local entities with a broad base of shared cultural elements and created a global and individualistic constellation since.
