Comments on: The Myth of Efficiency

By: M.G. in Progress

M.G. in Progress — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:31:58 +0000

Let’s be clear. There is no evidence that instant messaging (including some emailing) and use of smart phones have increased efficiency and productivity. On the contrary they may have lost effectiveness and people instead of doing the right thing just try to do things right, without thinking too much…With some technologies you stop thinking and organizing and you focus on “reply” and “delete”. Just compare emails to old telefax. It’s amazing on how people measures the amount and importance of their work (particularly coming back from holidays) on the numbers of emails to be read in the inbox and deleted. These people should have tried some more manual work before considering that the number of emails and replies is a proxy of their efficiency and effectiveness at work.
I just give you another myth of efficiency in the organization of daily family shopping (at work it’s the same kind of thinking). In the old time before going out you would check your inventories make a list and plan ahead for few days of the family needs (including different shops to be visited which is if you do it more environment friendly). Today first thing people tends to do is going out for shopping then calling back home or browsing on smart phones to check what they need and where they need to go. Think also about GPS use by most people. In the past you would plan ahead your trip, study the map at home go out and then if you need some help you just would ask somebody on the street. Today you get into your car without knowing where you are going as you rely on the smart phone with GPS. Then you realize that you are wasting the same time programming the GPS or browsing for hints and tips realizing perhaps that it’s not update. On top of that you are also loosing the pleasure of the trip whose best part, like in the Muslim tradition, it’s not to get quickly to destination but to make the trip (including talking to people to ask for directions).
I am afraid that there are some misconceptions of efficiency and with technologies like smart phone we are loosing the time and pleasure to think and organize (being yourself smart). Are we sure that smart phones and similar gadgets are improving the quality of our lives and work done?

By: TheFlamingoKing

TheFlamingoKing — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:18:56 +0000

Time spent carrying water can be spent on other tasks if you use a more “efficient” system like the sprinkler. These tasks include more strenuous exercise than what you get watering plants. Doing work for the sake of doing work seems inferior to doing work efficiently and then choosing an efficient way to spend the leftover time gained.

Certainly buying plates from your friend has benefits, mostly coming from the relationship you have with that friend. Claims that buying the plates locally “help keep another person employed” are misplaced, however, as you are merely trading labor from one individual to another – if enough people purchased local plates instead of imports, that Chinese worker would be the one unemployed. “Global shipping” is also misplaced, because even if your friend could manage to secure 100% of his raw materials without import, a significant increase in demand for local pottery would make this unsustainable and import would become eventually necessary.

I agree with you – efficiency can only truly be calculated when all real costs are understood. Unfortunately, as you can see, that is often near impossible due to the complexity of interacting economics in a global environment.

By: Tom Shillock

Tom Shillock — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:42:01 +0000

John’s got it. Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s time and motion studies may have made sense for improving the efficiency of assembly lines but applying such techniques to intellectual work is absurd. Yet it’s a major source of inefficiency in American corporations whose profoundly ignorant managers still think in terms of this industrial paradigm of work.

By: Joseph j7uy5

Joseph j7uy5 — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:42:57 +0000

I dislike commenting after a long comment thread, but this is a pet peeve that I would like to air. Discussions of efficiency are inherently imprecise when the type of efficiency is not specified. Efficiency is always a quotient: the number of units of the desired product, divided by the number of units of valued resource expended. Usually, it is obvious from the context what the units are measuring. But not always. And, given the fact that different people have different priorities, it is not unusual for them to disagree about what measure of efficiency is pertinent.

What is the most efficient vehicle? Upon reading that question, most people would be thinking of miles per gallon as the pertinent measure. But if you are transporting bales of hay, a Prius would be a ridiculous vehicle to use. If you want to move the maximum number of bales per hour, you need a truck.

Likewise, if you are a buy-and-hold investor, you shouldn’t care too much about profit in any one quarter. The last thing you want, is for the company to take an enormous risk, and go bankrupt. That is true, even if they have a few spectacular quarters. On the other hand, if your bonus is based on your yearly performance, you may very well care about short-term profits. The investor and the manager may both say they are interested in maximizing shareholder value, but they will have very different ideas about what should be done to achieve that end, because they are using different measures.

So please, when talking about efficiency, take a few seconds to say what is being divided by what. It may seem like an inefficient use of words, but it saves time in the long run.

By: JJ

JJ — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:22:59 +0000

We have huge inefficiencies in the stucture of government itself. Benefit levels could increase if administrative costs drop. Once again, you have t gore someon’s ox. Municipalties should be cnsolidated for starters.

By: REinsider

REinsider — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:52:28 +0000

Very interesting! I will have to try this even if it means starting 20 minutes earlier. Simple and I think this will help.

By: quixote

quixote — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:11:13 +0000

In the 1920s at the birth of industrial efficiency the correct approach was to view humans as one of the machines in the process.

Amazing, that after 90 years of psych studies we haven’t got beyond that.

A worker who cares, who loves their work, who wants to get the job done, will get it done in the best and fastest way possible. Loving, wanting, or caring are not things machines ever do.

Shaving two minutes off a process while annoying the worker will net you a loss in time and money, but nobody can measure it.

There’s no way to measure what you could have had if the workers hadn’t been annoyed into not caring.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:57:35 +0000

Thank you for writing this! I had many of the same thoughts as I listened to the podcast this morning.

By: c smith

c smith — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:28:05 +0000

You’ve just figured out the problem with government at the Federal (money printing) level: there are no “limiting constraints”. In private enterprise, the limiting constraint is a lack of revenue to pay expenses, including worker’s salaries. Efficiency in this environment is essential AT SOME POINT, or all the customers disappear, along with revenue. Federal workers have no such constraints, however, as the powers to tax (and print money if need be) trump any constraints. This is the source of much of the popular disaffection with government today.

By: Wayne Martin

Wayne Martin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:27:22 +0000

> This will make you a “bad” manager in the employees
> eyes though.

The purpose of any business is to make money, by providing desirable products and services at a reasonable price–not to provide a place where employees “stand around” or “talk about music”.

Coffee shops might not be the best example for discussing this problem of “efficiency”, which is probably more relevant to a manufacturing environment. (My father was involved in a huge project conducted by the Navy in the early 1950s that examined the aircraft repair facilities of the Atlantic Fleet. He was not very popular, but some significant changes were effected that saved the Navy big $$$.)

Just rearranging things to “keep people busy” is not what was suggested here. What is suggested is that a good manager will staff appropriately to the customer demand, and otherwise assign work that needs to be done in order to pick up “slack”.

A good manager also “works” with his/her employees to make certain that they understand why various jobs needed to be done. This isn’t always successful, but helps.

By: Phil Feller

Phil Feller — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:47:16 +0000

I posted some immediate comments to Planet Money about ways that they fell short of what could have been a great piece, and the more I thought about it the more flaws I found. For one, the example of the batrista displays an unstated (and perhaps unintentional) assumption that higher utilization is better. Queuing theory, which every MBA student learns in their operations management class. challenges that assumption. What if the barista’s utilization increases from 50% to 75%? A simple calculation shows that the length of the customer queue triples. For another, what type of corporate culture do you foster when you obsess about employees’ efficiency, particularly if you don’t leave time for the types of interactions needed to build a strong culture? And without a strong corporate culture, how likely is it that increased efficiency will last after the initial push is over?

By: Calvin

Calvin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:40:25 +0000

I like the cut of your jib here. Efficiency is not so simple. As a computer programmer, there are times when I am 100% focused on a problem and I will sit back and use my brain to put together some information I have just looked at. I am still focused on the problem, but it might look like I’m daydreaming. Sometimes this is not even an active process. I study the code and the output from the failing program. Then I take a break. I come back from the break and I’m off on new path of research that I might not have thought of without that break (this is one thing I miss about being a smoker, I used to solve a lot of problems in the smoking lounge). My point is that walking to the printer or to the bathroom or break room is often *fostering* productivity rather than being unproductive. I might also see a colleague on the way there. I didn’t want to bother that person just yet as they are busy, too, but since they are in the hallway, I say, “hey I’m looking at this piece of code,” and maybe they point me somewhere that is useful. That wouldn’t happen without that “forced” human interaction.

I wonder how this spying software in the “cubical of tomorrow” will react to my “daydreaming”…:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3193223.ece

By: Neil D

Neil D — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:36:56 +0000

Oh sure – just what we need – more efficiency. There go another 10% of the jobs in the USA.

Here is one vote in favor of inefficiency! :)

Let’s just all work for 50% less pay. That would be efficient!

By: Bill in MA

Bill in MA — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:59:02 +0000

That’s the way it worked for me for a while, but then I hit a wall and for years no matter what I achieved, no matter what awards I won or how highly I was evaluated, my compensation rises at pretty much the same rate as everyone else’s. I was promoted to my current level in 2002, it was taken away in a re-org in 2005 and it took 3 years to get it back. Getting it back was so difficult, I doubt I’ll ever be promoted again.

So I am in the situation Austin describes. I am a very efficient employee and for that I am rewarded with more work, but not higher pay. For years I busted my butt in order to earn Exceeds and Outstanding evaluations and was rewarded with raises that were one quarter of 1 percent higher than those who simply Met Expectations. I got the message finally and stopped working so hard.

By: luko

luko — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:35:27 +0000

We rotate managers and directors. So this latest crew is all about counting minutes. Here’s what we got on an employee survey “So, you choose the worst recession to tighten the screws. If there wasn’t 10% unemployment I would be outta here.”

This from someone who accepted a college-graduate entry-level position that cost us $20,000 to fill and who needs to stay with us a bit over 3 years for us to break even.