The short
- Shift: Businesses optimized relentlessly for cost and speed.
- Outcome: Systems lost slack, buffers, and resilience.
- Trigger: Disruptions exposed hidden fragility.
- Reality: Efficiency amplifies failure when conditions change.
- Lesson: Redundancy is not waste — it is protection.
How efficiency became a religion
From manufacturing floors to software teams, efficiency became a moral virtue. Lean staffing, just-in-time supply chains, and constant utilization were praised as discipline.
Anything unused was labeled waste. Any pause was framed as laziness.
The system worked — as long as nothing went wrong.
What fragility looks like in practice
Modern failures are rarely dramatic at the start. They begin with small disruptions:
- a delayed shipment,
- a key employee leaving,
- a minor software outage.
In tightly optimized systems, there is no margin to absorb impact. Problems cascade instead of stabilizing.
Why efficiency amplifies risk
Efficiency removes options.
When every resource is fully utilized, there is nothing left to reassign. When every process is tuned for speed, there is no room for inspection.
What looks optimal on spreadsheets becomes brittle in reality.
The hidden value of slack
Slack — extra time, extra people, extra inventory — appears inefficient. But it performs critical functions:
- absorbing shocks,
- enabling recovery,
- allowing judgment under pressure.
Slack converts surprise into survivability.
Why resilience is returning
After repeated disruptions, companies are re-learning old lessons.
They are holding more inventory. Rebuilding internal teams. Accepting slower but safer processes.
Not because it feels good — but because fragility is expensive.
The takeaway
Efficiency maximizes performance in stable conditions. Resilience determines survival when conditions change.
The strongest organizations are no longer the leanest — they are the ones built to bend without breaking.