Efficiency Is Overrated
Productivity, however, is exactly the wrong thing to care about in the new economy. To measure efficiency you need a uniform output. But uniform output is becoming rarer in an economy that emphasizes smaller production runs, total customization, personalized "feelgoods" and creative innovation. Less and less is uniform. And machines have taken over the uniform. They love tedious and measurable work.Kelly wrote that in 1998. It took AI to make it literal.
Efficiency is a measure for uniform work, and the machines have claimed the uniform. Competing on their metric is a losing game.
The pursuit of "efficiency"—getting the most with the least investment of energy, time, or money—was once a laudable goal, but being effective in today's world is less a question of optimizing for a known (and relatively stable) set of variables than responsiveness to a constantly shifting environment. Adaptability, not efficiency, must become our central competency.McChrystal makes the same observation from the battlefield. Optimisation assumes the variables hold still. They don't.
The scarce thing was never output.
Efficiency is for questions you have already answered.
Nobody is paying for those anymore.