Isn't efficiency a good place to start?
Yes, as the on-ramp. No, as the destination. Take the hours back, then spend them on redesign, not on a faster version of the same company.
Yes, and it is the most dangerous place to stop.
Efficiency is a fine on-ramp. The hours you save fund the harder work, and the early, visible wins buy you the political capital to attempt something that actually changes the company. Small wins build the habit that larger change stands on. So take the efficiency. That is not the mistake.
The mistake is banking it as the destination. When you automate a process, you also freeze it. You take a workflow shaped by the limits of an older technology and pour fresh concrete around it. Faster concrete, still concrete. You made yesterday permanent and called it progress. A year later you are quicker at the same documents, the same meetings, the same decisions in the same order, and you wonder why nothing feels different.
So the test is not whether you took the efficiency win. Take it. The test is what you spend it on. Efficiency that funds a redesign is the first move of a transformation. Efficiency that funds next year’s slightly faster version of the same company is a dead end with good margins. The way to tell them apart is to name the size of the change you are actually attempting, and to be honest that a faster workflow is one rung, not the whole climb. The long version is in The Biotech of Tomorrow.
Cheers,
-Titus
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