Inefficiency Desperately Needed

In the teeth of this howling recession, corporations are scrambling to find 'efficiencies' to bolster the crumbling bottom line.

And efficiency is good, right?   

Could this be one of those silver linings we hear so much about?  Something good that will come out of all this pain?

Maybe.  But take a closer look at the 'efficiencies' these companies are implementing.

For most of these companies, most of the time, increasing efficiency simply means holding the line on profits by cutting costs, and this cost-cutting most often means slashing payroll.

The economic news of late has been a litany of company after company announcing job cuts.  And, usually, the news is greeted with approval on Wall Street, and the stock of these companies gets a lift in value (if ever so briefly).

The reality to the customers of these companies - unless they also happen to be stockholders, is less rosy.  They get to enjoy reduced customer service, and sundry other 'inefficiencies' resulting from an overworked, stretched-too-far workforce.  And a workforce, it should be noted,  that has been made fatalistic and cynical.  Just the attitude you want coming from someone on the other end of a line or email whose helpful attention you need.

So - is there an answer to this situation?

Yes!

Starting now, from this minute forward, let's urge all the CEO's we know, or can lookup in Lexus Nexus, to implement inefficiency. Urge them to start with the biggest of all, and that's to add jobs.  

And add them inefficiently, with no thoughts of whether the new positions are really needed - or for what they are needed.  Just hire talented people, the kind of people any company would want, give them a desk and a clean slate and tell them to, 'make something happen'.

Chances are they will too.

Sloppy and slapdash as we often are, as demanding and difficult as we can be, there is nothing so magnificently good for business as an inefficient human being given a nebulous and open mandate.  

Out of nothing, people can make something.  

Business 'leaders', Wall Street boffins, and just about everyone on the business news channels forget companies are people.  Corporations are not simply buildings, contracts, materials, and products.  

With too few people, companies are like zombies, staggering along, capable of doing only what's been ingrained in them, and creating nothing new.  Without people, they are just dead, spirit-less bodies, awaiting the embalmer...

Or perhaps awaiting a new possession and infusion of people.

An infusion of delightfully inefficient people.

And right now, inefficiency is desperately needed ...