Efficiency at what cost?

So I’ve spent the past week interviewing my coworkers about what they do and what their thoughts about the company (a little more background is available here). One topic that’s come up several times is efficiency. How we can we make ourselves into more productive workers?

There were several things that were mentioned, things like: organizing the tools in the shop so people aren’t wasting time looking for tools, making sure meetings didn’t go off tangent, making sure that there's a proper schedule and that it’s updated. And for the most part these sound like reasonable suggestions for how to improve workplace productivity, though there are some questions on how they’re to be implemented.

There were other suggestions for increasing efficiency, like substituting email for getting up and asking a question, or having people only do what they’re good at (ie. a designer only designs, a welder only welds, etc).

And one phase I remember pretty clearly was ‘a good team member does their role.’ Sure, these suggestions also sound reasonable. An email may save more time than getting into a conversation that derails and when you’re on a deadline it makes sense to let the people who are best at doing certain things, do certain things. But like the phrase ‘a good team member does their role,’ it feels weird. Yeah its a job, but at the end of the day don’t we want the people we work with to be more than just cooperative?

For me, all this talk about increasing efficiency seems to be somewhat dehumanizing. Sure the person we’re getting up to bother might be busy, and it might disrupt both our and their work flows. Sure I’m not as good at using xyz than the other guy. But communication and learning is central to how we grow as human beings right?

If we take away those things in the name of productivity the job description then sounds robotic. A ______ that does one job really well, over and over again, communicates digitally.

Maybe I’m being a little dramatic. But still, it’s efficiency at what cost?

A book recommendation I would like to make is The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us about Being Alive by Brian Christian.