Ep 401 | Stop Being So Efficient!

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I want to talk about your problem with efficiency, my problem with efficiency. See, in business, in life, especially here in this country, We are taught to be efficient, and generally that's a, that's a good thing. I'll speak for myself, I probably have an efficiency issue in that pretty much in everything I do in business and in life, I'm constantly looking for ways to create more efficiency, more speed, more accuracy, eliminating time wasted I just, I'm just not a fan of downtime. And my, that's the way my mind works. I am constantly trying to optimize and again, to get more out of something in a shorter period of time. Usually that serves me well, but just recently I was thinking around this, and I know I ask myself some weird questions. I actually asked myself, when, when is it actually helpful to be inefficient? In other words, is there a, is there a point where there's helpful inefficiency in business and in life? When I'm saying helpful inefficiency, I think what I'm kind of referring to specifically in a business context are the processes or the practices that may actually seem to make some things inefficient or slower, but because they're inefficient or slower you ultimately yield long-term benefits or maybe even higher quality results. I'm talking about becoming a bit more intentional with my inefficiency. And the idea being that there's advantages to doing so. Maybe it's in fostering more creativity, maybe it's building deeper, stronger relationships, maybe it's just ensuring quality or thoroughness. So these, these actions, you know, and I got to get my head around this, these actions may not appear productive, especially in the short term, but they do contribute to things in the long term, to deeper engagement, better decision-making, and again, just stronger outcomes. So where in business might it be beneficial to focus less on efficiency and, dare I say, become inefficient? Here's some things I'm thinking around. Number 1, Client relationship building. Yes, I want to move the ball forward in a prospect or client relationship. I do struggle with maybe the pace or slow pace at which sometimes it moves, but the reality is in client relationship building, there has to be a degree of personalized attention, which means you got to take extra time to connect with prospects, with clients, especially on a personal level, because you build trust, you build loyalty. And that creates longer-term relationships. So in terms of client relationship, we've got to listen, we've got to understand. Being inefficient is actually a really good thing here, right? Not always moving quickly and being efficient is necessary. I also think about inefficiency, of course, when it comes to hiring, when it comes to talent acquisition. If we become too efficient in this process, we can easily overlook a variety of things. So we've got to conduct thorough interviews. We've got to onboard. But I would contend maybe onboard slowly. It may still be efficient in that you're following a protocol, but it's slow. When I look back over time about, you know, around the bad hires or, or the bad onboarding experiences I may have provided to people, a lot of times it just has to do with the speed at which I was moving. Again, slowing down and creating, dare I say, more inefficiency might create a more in-depth onboarding process, which helps people better integrate. I think inefficiency might be great in quality assurance, like doing quality checks, slowing down and conducting more manual processes, maybe eliminating some automation. This ensures critical oversight and it reduces the risk of overlooked errors that may happen in efficient systems. I also think slower rollouts with certain things that we do. In your business right now, you may be anxious to get a new product or a new service out, but the reality is if you ever were less efficient, maybe even inefficient, you were tactical, you had a plan, but you were slower and you more gradually introduced the new service and the new product. Could you get better feedback? Could you reduce the risk of maybe larger-scale failures? I think in terms of creativity, I'm big on, you know, brainstorming sessions, whiteboard sessions. If you've listened to the No Days Off podcast for a while, if you're part of the No Days Off Nation, you know I reference the whiteboard all the time. I think taking time and being inefficient with the brainstorming session is a great thing. You get more creative as a result. You have more time to explore not just the ideas that first show up, but the more wild ideas, the ones that come about after longer conversation. It may feel unproductive in the short term, but oftentimes this results in a more innovative and unique outcome. Lastly, in terms of inefficiency— and there's lots of other places, but I'm just telling you what I'm thinking about— uh, strategic decision-making. Like, the reality is oftentimes decision— decisions, poor decisions are made because we strive for efficiency and speed in which we make those decisions. And while in many cases you do have to be, you know, making decisions with decent— with a decent pace, when you have the opportunity to deliberate and debate, take more time to analyze and understand different perspectives, think through and not make rushed choices, you usually limit the negative long-term consequences. Not just in decision-making, but just scenario planning. When you could plan and be more thoughtful and consider different scenarios, multiple scenarios, and consider all of the what-ifs, which I'm a big fan of. It takes longer. It's inefficient if you're trying to go from point A to point B, but it certainly prepares for various outcomes. Lots of other places, of course, you know, as I'm just saying this now, I'm thinking about culture and team building. I'm thinking about Partnerships. I'm thinking about customer support. These things can be inefficient to some extent. Now, in personal— in your personal world, there is helpful inefficiency in your self-care, in your health, mental health, in learning and education, like getting more deep— a deeper understanding because you're moving with less efficiency. There's certainly benefit to being inefficient in your parenting. Things like unstructured conversation, or even play. Teaching life skills, like taking the time to teach kids skills and spending time and being thorough, like cooking or cleaning or decision-making. This long-term leads to greater confidence, greater independence. I certainly think about inefficiency on vacation, travel, exploration, taking detours, moving at a slower pace. You, of course, I could keep going on and on, but you see that inefficiency, there's actually great benefit in a variety of places. So what's the purpose of today? The purpose of today's message is that a lot of what we cover here at No Days Off absolutely has to do, has to do with being more efficient, more efficient in how we move, uh, getting more out of every, every ounce that we put into a business or in life. I mean, it is the no days off, like literally get better every single day. And I don't want to stop you from getting better every single day. I just want to give you a slightly different vantage point in that recognizing from time to time, there is some purposeful inefficiency, some helpful inefficiency that will serve you well. So, the focusing question for you, where would being slightly less efficient be of benefit to you? In your business and your personal world? Where can you not necessarily just slow down, because pace doesn't necessarily equate to inefficiency or efficiency, but where do you slow down and worry less about dotting the i's and crossing the t's and maybe create more experience, more dialogue, more creativity? Where might that show up? That's all I have for you today in the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.