Efficiency has been on my mind a lot lately.

Efficiency is a big company problem. When you have thousands of customers (or even hundreds of thousands) that you have to communicate with on a regular basis, you can’t afford to be inefficient. The cost of manpower and lost opportunities can destroy profitability when small inefficiencies scale up to massive infrastructure. That’s when programs, software, and systems can help you scale.

But what happens when you’re small? Remember my chat about your source of your weakness is also the source of your greatest strength? When you’re small, you can afford to reach out to individual customers one at a time. You can afford to pick up the phone and call people to check in. You can afford to text someone to see if there’s any way you could be of service to them right now.

It’s incredibly inefficient. But it’s also incredibly human and extremely effective. 

Right now it feels like every service is supposed to “slice through the mundane” and make us “a THOUSAND TIMES MORE EFFICIENT”. When it comes to mundane tasks that are the price of existing in the world, sure. Things like clearing out spreadsheets, aggregating data, or filling out meaningless bulk answers for government required forms that no one is ever going to read.

When it comes to a human connection, the worst possible thing you can do is be more efficient.

Friendship is inconvenient. The ingredients of real relationships don’t slot neatly into spreadsheets and schedules. 

We forgive big companies this weakness because a part of us knows and accepts that there will be certain human elements lost when you get to a certain scale.

But when we experience the same thing at a small company, it can destroy all faith and trust. At the best, it will feel stiff and forced. At the worst, it will feel lazy or cold and thoughtless.

If you’re small, like Wizard Academy, don’t be afraid to be inefficient when it comes to human interaction. 

Human connection is worth the time.
People are worth the time.

Latest posts by Daniel Whittington (see all)