A great goal in business, programming, and perhaps even life is efficiency. An enormous amount of effort is put into processes and automation to perform as efficiently as possible. This can be seen in factories, shops, and the many processes in a company. It seems as if efficiency is the highest good, and inefficiency is the greatest evil. However, there is a need for inefficiency. Inefficiency can be a force of good.
Inefficiency is able to be as good as efficiency can be bad. A maximum efficiency in business activities would entail that if even one thing changes the whole house of cards falls down. A simple (and usually positive) change as an increased number of orders for the company cannot be handled as the company is already at maximum efficiency and thus indirectly maximum capacity.
Another example would be when a supply line can only function when everything works without any delay or any defects. It became clear during the covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022) that the worlds supply chain is highly efficient, but also extremely brittle. When cases of covid-19 infections became too high in China, they announced a nation-wide quarantine to curb the spread of the virus. This in turn had major effects on the supply chains, creating massive shortages (mainly electronics related) in the world.
Only a single change, large or small, was able to create impactful repercussions. Simple solutions for these are making the overall system inefficient, but also robust and scalable. Introducing redundancy allows for parts to fall away while the rest can continue to function. Larger timelines allows for delays and mistakes, basically underpromise and overdeliver on the time aspect with this solution.
Of course, this does not simply apply to only organizations. I personally like to be efficient with my resources. These resources include money, time, and quality. But I do not, and more importantly should not, focus on optimizing every little thing in my life. If I did that I would likely go mad. The optimization alone would consist of an incredible amount of variables such that I would never be able to act upon the optimized choices.
Thus while efficiency is great, I hope that I’ve shown there is a need for some inefficiency in the system. To increase the robustness of the system or to keep yourself from going mad. It is fine to not be optimal a full 100% of the time. It is good to let yourself waste some time or money once in a while.