Against Efficiency

Estimated Reading Time: 6-8 minutes

Design work isn’t efficient. This is a good thing.

We often conflate efficiency with value. What’s the ideal week at school? Faster meetings, shorter timelines, fewer problems, cleaner outcomes, less friction. If we can move more quickly, we tell ourselves, then we can focus on the “real work.” Sometimes that is true. Moving quickly through what does not matter can free us for what does. But the real work of schools is human work, and human work rarely meets the contours of efficiency.

Consider drop-off. What happens when we resist efficiency, when families linger a little longer on campus? Those few extra minutes offer space for connection: a conversation between educator and parent, a child who feels less hurried as they step into the day, a small moment of belonging that weaves a community’s fabric that much tighter. 

Design invites us to embrace this stance. Engaging in the work of good design slows us down enough to understand another’s experience before imagining how to make it better. It encourages us to linger in complexity, dwell in curiosity, and let the possibility of change emerge more gradually. Sometimes we do this by seeking deeper understanding, when we engage in empathy work to more fully grasp another’s perspective. Other times, we let ideas simmer a little longer, prototyping a few more options in order to test and discover the solution that truly resonates.

And when we invite people into design processes, we surface, share, and corroborate our human experiences together. Participation itself becomes part of the outcome: we’re sharing the human experience together. The result of good design should, in some way, reveal the human hand. It should remind us that someone, at some point, cared about our needs. That our experience is seen and valued. That we’re a part of a community.  When we race toward fixes, eager for answers and pressed for solutions, we risk stripping away the very conditions that make transformation possible. Efficiency delivers speed. It rarely delivers meaning.

Here’s the paradox: care requires efficiency and slowness. Sometimes we need to move faster through what’s secondary, so that we can move more slowly through what matters most. The key is to discern which is which.

When efficiency serves care

Efficiency is not the enemy. At its best, it clears the way for deeper human work. A faculty meeting that moves swiftly through announcements (maybe they’re an email?) creates time for engaging in work worth convening over. A clear system for surfacing emerging student needs reduces confusion and gives teams more opportunity to address those needs. A streamlined process for routine tasks allows leaders to focus their attention on what really matters.

In these cases, efficiency doesn’t diminish care. It creates the conditions for care. We move quickly through logistics so we can linger with people. We simplify the secondary to then invest in the essential. Efficiency becomes a gift when it frees us to show up more fully for one another.

When slowness serves care

Groups often become very good at pursuing new efficiencies. Once we find one–what a win! Let’s search for the next and the next. Yet we rarely reflect on, much less design with intent, the inefficiencies that serve us. But inefficiency has value. When deliberate, we normalize a space for care, reflection, listening, and building trust. The challenge is to decide which inefficiencies are worth keeping, by design. 

No one wants to stop a meeting to surface the uneasy feeling that perhaps the group should spend more time on maintenance. Yet pausing to surface subtle conflicts, repair agreements, revisit norms, or clean up processes, can preempt more significant problems later on. Strategic planning teams often push toward action, skipping the “inefficient” wandering of conversation and story that sometimes reveals deeper truths. Two teammates working on a task that one could easily accomplish offers an opportunity to share practice and align. Even relationship-building, the time spent laughing together, asking about weekends, or sharing food, can feel like a detour. But it is often this “wasted” time that holds communities together when challenges arise.

Slowness, in these moments, is not wasted time. It’s invested time, time: listening with empathy, gathering feedback on prototypes, signaling that other people matter. Allowing ideas to simmer acknowledges the complexity of the challenge. Creating space for iteration affirms that better answers emerge when we test and adjust. Slowness is an act of care.

The Invitation Effect

This is why design matters. The invitation to step into a design stance has benefits that extend beyond the resulting plan, schedule, or prototype. When we invite ourselves into design, we build the patience, curiosity, and willingness to be changed by what we discover, and create change from this new understanding. When we invite others into the stance, we extend trust, share agency, and open the possibility of co-creation. This might take a bit longer, this might feel a bit messy, but I’m sure glad to be in this experience with you. 

The invitation effect is subtle but powerful. Participation builds trust. It strengthens community. It gives people language for their hopes and frustrations. Even when the “thing” we are designing is still unfinished for longer than we’d efficiently like, the very act of shaping it together changes how we see ourselves and one another.

Good design–its process, and its product–should be felt. It should leave us with the sense that someone has anticipated us, thought of us, and welcomed us into an experience. That feeling is not a byproduct of design. It is the outcome.

A closing note

We do not need efficient schools or efficient communities. Can you imagine a more efficient childhood, more efficient learning, more efficient moments together? How quickly could we get to the end of it?

Instead, we need human ones. Human schools. Human moments. Where we step into the complexity of experience, the complexity of understanding and creating for one another, and immerse ourselves in the compassion, energy, and love this work generates, with and through the friction that arises along the way. 

We can get there by design. We can get there through design.