# Doing Stupid Things Faster By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2025-04-13 American society is obsessed with efficiency. This has been a traditional buzzword in business. With DOGE, it has become a central focus of government operations. Efficiency is not simply a cost reduction. It would be relatively simple to execute and called cost reduction. Calculating efficiency requires examining both the cost of the resources consumed and the value of the output produced. Efficiency is a ratio. Of the two, the cost of the resources consumed is far easier to calculate. The value of the output is highly contestable. For some, the value of a public library is immense; for others, it has negative utility. The same is true for defense or anything any organization produces. There is significant disagreement as to the value of the outputs. Therefore, there is considerable disagreement as to the efficiency of organizations. This is not an esoteric concern. It is the crux of any resource-constrained project. When organizations focus on “efficiency” without really addressing the contestability and ambiguity associated with the value of the output produced, the effort is a charade. One result of this pursuit is that organizations will do stupid things faster. Almost never will those stupid things have anything to do with producing valuable outputs. Instead, those stupid things will almost always be focused on internal operations designed to demonstrate the organization's efficiency. Drives for greater efficiency drive inefficiency as they increase the proportion of work related to internal processes and reporting. Doing stupid things faster makes things worse – always. #### Related Items [[American]] [[Efficiency]] [[Stupid]] [[Government]] [[Value]] [[Work]]