When Efficiency Goes Too Far

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Harvard Business Review

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4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2020

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Roger Martin, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, says that for decades the U.S. corporate system has been obsessed with eliminating inefficiencies. There's a point, his research shows, when these efficiency gains come with even greater social and economic costs. And he believes that the Covid-19 pandemic is increasingly exposing those weaknesses. He argues that leaders and CEOs should reassess and, in some ways, reverse course in their perpetual drive for efficiency. Martin is the author of the new book "When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession with Economic Efficiency."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.6	and practical advice on navigating divorce, disability, and career failures.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H.B.
0:16.0	Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. For many people around the globe now is a time of reflection. The coronavirus
0:50.3	pandemic has made so many of us change the way we work, we interact, and the way we think and feel. It has also
0:57.6	prompted many leaders to think more about how our economy is structured and
1:01.9	what they can do to improve the system.
1:05.0	Our guest today has been analyzing the growing economic inequality in U.S. society
1:10.0	and he sees it as a threat to the democratic capitalism that underpins the country's historical
1:16.0	success.
1:17.0	He says that for too long we've thought of the American economy as a machine and that the
1:21.6	end goal is always more and more efficiency.
1:26.0	That's had downsides for businesses and for people and he says it's time to rethink
1:31.2	some of those structures.
1:32.3	Roger Martin is a professor of Mary says it's time to rethink some of those structures.
1:33.2	Roger Martin is a professor emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University
1:37.8	of Toronto.
1:38.8	He's also the author of the book, When More Is Not Better better overcoming America's obsession with economic
1:45.1	efficiency. Roger thanks for joining me. Hey it's a pleasure Kurt thanks for
1:49.0	having me. So why is this obsession with economic efficiency a bad thing in your view?
2:01.0	Well it's like everything in life I think for almost everything in life
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