Process redesign work has always emphasized efficiency. The balance between efficient and effective is a longstanding debate amongst process-types, but efficient seems to win that debate on a regular basis.
One of the areas that process redesign tries to ‘fix’ is the points along the way where people need to interact with other people. For some reason, conversation is viewed as the ultimate inefficiency. And yet, the same organization that seeks to drive out interaction points claims to be interested in ’employee engagement’, ‘innovation’, and ‘collaboration’. How engagement, innovation, and collaboration happen when people don’t have any good reason to interact with each other is puzzling to me.
I’ve been thinking lately about intentional inefficiency. By this I mean embracing certain, selected inefficiencies in processes that support other organizational goals and are inflection points where innovation and creativity are most likely to take place.
What does intentional inefficiency do for you?
- It drives collaboration and innovation
- It creates engagement and connections between people
- It provides space for unexpected benefits
- Because it is intentional, it can be tracked and understood more effectively
Something to think about the next time you get after a process efficiency effort.