Against Optimization

“Think of efficiency as a high-performance engine. Under perfect conditions, it delivers maximum power and minimum waste. However, that very efficiency makes it less robust. Highly efficient systems have no slack, no redundancy, and therefore no resilience and no spare capacity.” — Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 26 March 2020

Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odds with the work, which requires resistance and tension in order to come into being.

As Fritjof Capra says: a machine can be controlled, a living system can only be disturbed. At best, we will find ways of carefully nudging a living system. According to Donella Meadows, we must find its leverage points, those pivots that allow us to influence system behavior. Most importantly: after each cautious inter- vention, we must patiently o... See more

there’s simply no way around the fact that we’re pretty fed up with a certain philosophical framework in Silicon Valley. It has many names: the growth mindset. OKRs. KPIs. Even Minimalism — the predominant aesthetic of our era. But at its core, it all comes down to one thing: the relentless optimization of everything in our world.

this mindset has l... See more

Efficiency is great in an unchanging environment, but to expect an environment to remain static is unrealistic. Environments change all the time. When workplaces value efficiency in a changing environment, they become fragile. Inefficiency, like a genetic mutation, can allow for serendipitous discovery. Sure, it may produce the same mistakes as bef... See more

emblematic ideas to take forward could include: * resilient and diverse communities as essential foundations; * the value of trust in government and civic institutions; * recognising the agility and capability latent within the public sector; * and the enormous value of inefficiency and redundancy in systems; * an understanding that there are essen... See more