Why Efficiency Isn't Always Good
What I watched: The human skills we need in an unpredictable world by Margaret Heffernan.
When I stumbled on this TED Talk by Margaret Heffernan on Heffernan’s Twitter feed, the topic drew me in, but I was not prepared for how relevant the 15 minutes I was about to spend would be. Simply superb. Timely. Important. Necessary.
Lately, I’ve been pondering the unpredictability of the world in which we live. I know it’s always been unpredictable, but it seems more so nowadays. Perhaps as Heffernan suggests, technology is making our work and personal lives more efficient but at the cost of people and organizations developing fewer skills to confront the unexpected.
Just today I was reading We haven’t built for this climate, an article that explains that despite all the predictions scientists have made about the outcomes of climate change, they’ve often gotten it wrong and not in the planet’s favor.
Some climate scientists and activists raise the possibility that climate change is already resulting in surprises missing in their models, such as the breaching of the once unthinkable temperature of 104°F (40°C) in the U.K., for example.
If this is the case, we all better buckle up, as more unpleasant surprises surely lie ahead.
I’ve stopped counting how many articles I’ve read that suggest that the timeline for the worst of climate change’s impacts is continually nearing closer to us as more data and the reality of weather disasters like extreme heat become the lead stories of news media cycles.
So, Heffernan’s TED Talk seems like something we all need to take to heart if we’re to continue to thrive in a world in which outcomes keep getting harder to predict with any reasonable accuracy.
The video starts out with an example of a supermarket chain transforming their business with a digital solution to increase efficiencies. Sounds good on its face. But it turns out empowering some of the flows of business life to an algorithmic task allocator can’t foresee the unpredictable. Whether it was a customer dropping a box of eggs, a child knocking over a store display, or that there would be a run on coconuts because the local high school was using them the next day for a project, the technological solution failed to adequately address the unpredictable.
Efficiency works really well when you can predict exactly what you’re going to need. But when the anomalous or unexpected comes along – kids, customers, coconuts – well, then efficiency is no longer your friend.
This has become a really crucial issue, this ability to deal with the unexpected, because the unexpected is becoming the norm.
Predicting anything with reasonable certainty has become much more difficult because the already complicated world has become complex. Patterns exist, but they don’t regularly repeat themselves. Small changes can create a disproportionate effect. As an example, look at what just a tiny change in average temperatures is doing to life on our planet. Experts don’t always have the answers because the systems are changing far too quickly.
Much of what’s going on in the world defies forecasting. Economics. Climate change. Market and business landscapes. Social and cultural mores. Political trends. All of these can change quickly. Thus, predicting with any certainty the future amid such escalating changes becomes nearly impossible.
Heffernan calls this ineradicable uncertainty.
In a time of such ineradicable uncertainty when forecasting is so problematic, efficiency will not just not help us, it’s the cause of reducing our capacity to adapt and respond.
In the past we often thought in terms of time management. Now we need to think about just in case scenarios. I contend that while Heffernan is often speaking to businesses and organizations in the video, this applies to our individual lives too.
Preparing for events that are generally certain but specifically remain ambiguous.
As but one example, we know there will be more epidemics in the future. Unfortunately, we don’t know where or when or what we’ll be dealing with. This makes planning impossible. But we can prepare. So there are multiple vaccines being developed for multiple diseases with the full knowledge that they can’t predict which of those vaccines are going to work or which diseases will make their way into our lives. That means some vaccines will never be used and that’s inefficient. But it’s proper robust preparedness because it provides more options that don’t have to depend on a single solution.
To adapt and respond quickly enough when change is upon us requires people to create and build relationships in which they trust each other. So we need to develop those relationships well in advance of any potential need to activate them in a crisis situation. This is an example of robust preparedness.
Countries that are really serious about climate change know that they have to adopt multiple solutions, multiple forms of renewable energy, not just one. The countries that are most advanced have been working for years now, changing their water and food supply and healthcare systems, because they recognize that by the time they have certain predictions, that information may very well come too late.
Many organizations, and people, are still stuck in the grasp of the efficiency myth. Heffernan suggests they try experimenting. Heffernan referenced an example of how home care nursing outcomes in the Netherlands were drastically improved by taking decisions out of the hands of the system and giving decision making back to the nurses. The patients ended up getting better in half the time and costs were reduced by 30%.
Such experiments by their nature will produce different results based on the location, culture, economic environment, area of life or business it’s addressing, and so on. That also means that every experiment won’t necessarily produce the desired outcome. That’s why it’s an experiment in the first place. Failed experiments may look inefficient but there is sometimes no other way to figure out how the real world works unless you give something a try.
Heffernan offers other examples of how efficiency is often the enemy of arriving at the best solution.
Preparedness, coalition building, imagination, experiments, bravery – in an unpredictable age, these are tremendous sources of resilience and strength. They aren’t efficient but they give us limitless capacity for adaptation, variation, and invention. And the less we know about the future, the more we’re going to need these tremendous sources of human, messy, unpredictable skills.
But, in our growing dependency on technology, we’re asset-stripping those skills. Every time we use technology to nudge us through a decision or a choice or to interpret how somebody’s feeling or to guide us through a conversation, we outsource to a machine what we could, can do ourselves, and it’s an expensive trade-off. The more we let machines think for us, the less we can think for ourselves.
I’ve worked in technology for years myself. I’m not here to lambast technology generally. But I think at times we err on the side of computerized and rigidly codified efficiencies to the detriment of good decision making or inventive change.
The more time doctors spend staring at digital medical records, the less time they spend looking at their patients. The more we use parenting apps, the less we know our kids. The more time we spend with people that we’re predicted and programmed to like, the less we can connect with people who are different from ourselves. And the less compassion we need, the less compassion we have.
What all of these technologies attempt to do is to force-fit a standardized model of a predictable reality onto a world that is infinitely surprising.
What gets left out? Anything that can’t be measured – which is just about everything that counts.
Our growing dependence on technology risks us becoming less skilled, more vulnerable to the deep and growing complexity of the real world.
Whether it’s the world of business or our personal lives, it’s friends and colleagues who will help us weather the world’s complexity and resulting unpredictability. For me, this is one of the big takeaways I got from the video. Nothing replaces human connection. Technology is but a tool and we often misuse it as a replacement for engagement with and contribution of people.
Anyone who tries to tell you that they know the future is just trying to own it, a spurious kind of manifest destiny. The harder, deeper truth is that the future is uncharted, that we can’t map it until we get there. But that’s OK, because we have so much imagination, if we use it. We have deep talents of inventiveness and exploration, if we apply them. We are brave enough to invent things we’ve never seen before. Lose those skills, and we are adrift. But hone and develop them, we can make any future we choose.
Speaking of the uncharted, Heffernan’s book, Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future, is already on my list of books to read in the future.
I hope your day, despite quite likely being unpredictable, is a good one.
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