915. The Hidden Risk of Being Too Efficient

Have you ever stop to think that maybe you’re too efficient?
That the very thing you’ve perfected is now holding you back?
In this episode, I explain the difference between efficiency and adaptability and why you need both to stay relevant, lead strongly, and keep growing.
This one’s a gut check, not just for your systems, but also for how you’re showing up in a fast-moving world.

Transcript

0:05

All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it. Welcome back to the show, and today we're gonna rock out of General Stanley McChrystal's book risk title like that. Man, I just, as soon as I saw the title, I was like. Yes, I'll take that. And it comes specifically from chapter 11, I believe it is, on adaptability. And I always ask myself like, this is something I constantly bang the drum about, about being efficient. And after reading this chapter, maybe really question, am I too efficient and not adaptable enough? I really question that, and I hope by the end of this episode you will too, because too much of anything, even a good thing, can wind up being a problem. As I unpack this, you're gonna realize I was like, oh, maybe, maybe I'm looking at this all the wrong way, because efficiency's crucial. Adaptability is too, and they need one another. And survival. True survival depends on both. And when I say survival, I'm not just talking about staying alive, I'm talking about staying relevant. It's about adapting to a future. Uh, as we all know it, it, it seems to be speeding up, doesn't it? It seems, I mean, like new revelations, new technologies, new of everything. I mean, it's like coming at us and, and Lightspeed and if you want to avoid extinction personally, professionally, just in your overall life. You gotta master the dance and dance is the right word. You gotta master the dance of efficiency and adaptability. That's what pulled me into this chapter and McChrystal list five struggles with adaptability and I couldn't help but pause and think, man, like. Am I too efficient? Is my team too efficient? Because if you're too efficient, you could lose your edge. You could be running a tight ship but going nowhere new. It's like the wilderness experience, what they do, they went round and round and round in a circle for 40 years. You imagine, bro, I'm not trying to be that. And sometimes if you're efficient, I mean imagine them, the Israelites walking around in the wilderness for 40 years. You think they weren't pretty damn efficient. They probably were. They probably knew how to get around that block pretty quick. They literally could do it in their sleep. They did for 40 years. I'm not trying to run this ship, and I'm not going anywhere new. I gotta get out there. There's, there's something more out there. I mean, here's the truth. Too much efficiency makes you deficient. In adaptability, you lock into a system. Think about that. Too much efficiency makes you deficient. In adaptability. You lock into these systems that brought you. Success. Good. Yes, it worked. But the problem is that you assume that they're gonna last forever. That they're gonna keep working forever. You think that you've cracked the code, but the code only worked to unlock to where you are today. But what you have to understand is, man, there's a whole nother code. So you may be three or four digits. Perfect. It's that last digit. That is now changed, and so you're efficient at dialing those first three, but that fourth digit you, you've lost sight of and you think that you're being efficient, but that last code, you're not being adaptable enough. Adaptability got gotchu success in the first place, but then it's this slow erosion. And you slid into efficiency. And I get it. I mean, this literally, you read this one cha. If you don't read the whole book at all, read that one chapter and it'll make you wonder like I was once adaptable. But it's a funny thing, man. They need both. But it's a funny thing. You could be adaptable to get to where you are, and then you slip into this efficiency, which is needed too. And now maybe you've become too efficient and no longer adaptable. If you want to keep winning, you need to be both adaptable and efficient, not one or the other. I. You need both. McChrystal lays out five struggles with adaptability, and as I list these out, see if you could recognize yourself or even your team. But really your team is a representation of you. So see if you could recognize yourself because we're not about to sit here and point fingers. If you're unhappy with the performance of the team, take stock in yourself. Go look in the mirror. All right. Number one, an adaptability struggle could be that you're two beats behind. You're lagging. You were once a leader in your space, and now you're just running with the pack. You're average. You're stuck on doing what used to work getting the same stale results. And the problem is, is you can rationalize it, you can blame the economy, you could blame parts, you could blame your staff. You can blame all kind. And dude, it all sounds right. You can rationalize it all away, but if you find that you're doing that, you've, you've, you've lost your adaptability. You're behind and it's a sheer sign that you've gone too far down Old efficiency road. I just thought about, what was that? Uh, old Town Road. Uh, Billy Ray, Iris, I'm gonna tell you, what's the song? Anyway, I don't know why I even thought about that. All right. Number two, frozen. By fear or failure, you overthink everything, bro. You what if yourself to death, you hesitate to adapt because you already, you pulled your punch. You already think that it's not gonna work. But adaptability requires risk. Hell, that's the name of his book. So adaptability requires risk, man. You have to embrace the uncertainty. Hello, what do I talk about the three problems in life? Uncertainty, adversity, and complacency. You gotta embrace the uncertainty. That's where the risk is. That's where the growth is too. You gotta foster that mindset of being adaptable. That means, bro, you're gonna take some Ls, you're gonna take some losses, but they're not failures. It's part of the process of failing. They're tuition payments for future wins. You gotta get to these points to realize what won't work, what needs to be adapted, what needs to be let go of number three, supercharging a losing engine. You dig in instead of changing course, you push your team harder, but you're headed in the wrong direction. This is where you guys start blaming each other. You start cannibalizing one another. You get these little posses within the organization. You walk back there and there's a little group and you're like, Hey man, what's going on? And they stop talking. This engine, it's a losing engine. It's, it's, it's starting up. It's not leadership, man. That's panic disguised as drive you got. Five different teams trying to pull this mission. You need one team coming together and y'all don't need to eat each other up. Y'all need to recognize what it is and you can course correct on these things. Number four, another adaptability. A fourth adaptability struggle. Unable to innovate. You're stuck in your ways. This is one, bro, you gotta be honest with yourself. You gotta just call a foul and don't even worry about when it happened or anything like that. As I was writing this man, I'm like, bro, when did some of this happen for me? You don't even realize it, but you can't recognize it, and that's a good thing. So you become, when you're unable to innovate, you become a judge instead of a learner. Experience can be a trap if it makes you too rigid. You can, you're not flexible anymore. You're just, you're just drawing on that experience. I know. I've been doing this 27 years. I know what's best. No, you don't. No, you don't because you don't know what's gonna happen 27 months from now. That experience only got you so far. It's good that you have that experience. You've weathered some storms. Now you need to suspend that and innovate. You can't have your head down in the grind, never looking up. You're not seeing how the world is shifting on you. And if you don't see that the world is shifting, the world will take a shift on you all over you. You gotta be able to see, you gotta be able to adapt because if you're not adapting, you're fading. The fifth adaptability struggle that McChrystal talks about, why didn't I think of that phase? The Homer Simpson phase. So this is the armchair quarterback stage. You watch everybody else innovating, and all you do is you criticize it, you critique it, you pull it all apart. You're not executing anymore, you're just analyzing from the sidelines. You're sitting in the press box watching the plays. That ain't playing the game. You gotta get out there. If you think you can do it better, if you see flaws in it, then damn it, you do it. The reason why you didn't think of it, if you find yourself say, oh man, I didn't think about that, but lemme tell you something, the reason why you didn't think about it is'cause you stopped taking action. You got too efficient and not adaptable enough. And that adaptability requires that you stretch McChrystal wrote, efficiency Alone is not enough to guarantee success or survival. That is the one line that made me go back and read this chapter again. That is the one line. That's why I say, man, when you read sometimes and you just, it just snags you. One sentence. Can change your whole life. Efficiency alone is not enough to guarantee success. Our survival, he continues. Our team's require the willingness and adaptability to change to the conditions ever shifting beneath our feet. Willingness, eager. Ready. Prepared. You gotta be willing to adapt, not react. See, reacting is when you're in the defense, adapting you'll forever be on the offense. And survival alone may not, obviously is not the ultimate goal, but it is the foundation. You gotta survive first. If you want to thrive later, you gotta be able to weather these storms. You gotta be able to go through it and grow through it. So competing and surviving together lead to thriving, but they both require adaptability, and efficiency. McChrystal also says that organizations must identify interdependence and address contradictions before competitors can circumvent them. This is key. This made me kind of look too, I'm like, what is interdependence? It's where everybody's kind of dependent on one another, right? These Captain Clingons. So in other words, it's good to be. To depend on one another, but not in the case where you're just too efficient and you're not adaptable. So you guys are just, you get into this ecosystem and you're all thinking the same. You're not ruffling any feathers. You're not challenging, you're not challenging each other or what you're doing or even what's going on. And so you're too in interdependent, you're too dependent on one another. And then you're contradicting one another. What is the contradiction part? That's where your actions don't line up with what you guys stand for. Your systems are solid, but your results are stale. You got the system down pat, you're efficient. Yay. The results have flattened. You're not adaptable. Sometimes you say that you're innovating, but really what you're doing is you're just conforming to what you've always done and you gotta be aware of second order, ripple effects, second order, ripple effects or consequences of consequences. And you gotta question, are your decisions setting off a chain of destruction? Growth. It could be the fuse that blows you up in a good way or blows you up in a bad way. You gotta look at that. Are you building a self-sustaining machine or creating a house of cards? It's that second order, ripple effects, and it, you're like, you think it's first order and it's not. It could be a chain of events that has happened. And that's where you gotta kind of analyze it and be like, uh, okay, I see where this is going. I see how these are connected, like a domino effect. Okay. You gotta be unafraid to blend the old with the new. It's where you gotta change, man. You gotta, you gotta break some shit, disrupt some shit, challenge some shit. So you gotta be unafraid to blend the old with the new and. That may mean that you gotta look like old green pea Again, you gotta look like a rookie. It's gonna also require some temporary losses. Temporary losses, and then you gotta suspend that ego Lego of my ego and refuse to be identified and defined by your past results by your title. About how you look. Get rid of all that. Once you integrate, here's what's beautiful about it. Once you integrate the new, as you adapt with the old, your experience, you become lethal, man. It's like the formula is experience plus adaptability equals elite. Krystal says adaptability is rarely ever comfortable and often requires us to find new ways to jump to clearer and higher bars, but it's an absolute necessity. So if you're comfortable, you're probably too efficient and not adaptable enough, and you're about to get lapped. You gotta be aware of that. Efficiency, believe it or not, can put you in a rut. You get really, really good at being average. So you gotta start with honesty. Confrontation is key. Confront yourself, be real, man. Am I too efficient? Are you rationalizing your stagnation? Your flattened results? Are you telling stories? Creating a narrative every single day instead of facing facts. Hold what you do. Well, loosely be willing to let it go. You're not gonna lose your core. The core never changes. But efficiency and adaptability are not enemies. They're actually teammates. They hold each other accountable. That's what's key. They, they really, they dance together. They balance, they compliment one another. Lemme say it like that 'cause I, I try to stay a word from the word balance away from the word balance. It's a dance, it's a compliment of one another. Adaptability and efficiency. So, because you realize, hopefully by now that too much of either is gonna be dangerous. You could be too efficient and you can't adapt, or you can be too adaptable and you lose your consistency. So what's the solution? It's not anything big. You just gotta ask some questions, man. I. Like, what's changing? Honestly? What, like, this is some alone time that you need to spend first with yourself, and maybe you, you put that mandate out there. What, what do you see as changing? And then y'all come together. What's changing? Just round Table it, man. Throw it out there. Don't try to defend what you're doing. That could be a sign that you're being too efficient, you're rationalizing it. Just lay it out there. Just let it linger. Don't have the answers, just. Ask the question, have a question only meeting, and maybe come behind with some, some thoughts later. Maybe, maybe all in the same day isn't, isn't the thing. Maybe you just let those thoughts just kind of float out there. They kind of linger, like what's changing? What new habits and technologies and tendencies, what's bubbling up out there? What's already there that we've been sitting there rationalizing or being, waiting to be forced to change. Where am I stuck? Where do I need to stretch? I, this is, these are questions that I'm asking myself, man. It's like I've been wanting to be more efficient, but maybe I'm efficient and not adaptable enough. Maybe I gotta look at both of those things. Actually, not maybe. I know for sure after reading this is like. I'm banging the drum on efficiency, but what about adaptability? Where's the space for that Adaptability Got you here, but it gotta take me somewhere else. Otherwise, you're gonna be in this efficiency rut. You're gonna be really good again, at being average. You gotta understand, man, there are seasons to this thing and sometimes. You may not see change. Change may be super, super slow. So when that is, and change is slow, this is your chance to double down on efficiency while keeping your eyes on the horizon. And then other times change is rapid. And what's interesting is, is when change is slow, you get really good. And developing these efficiencies so it sets you up. So when change begins to speed up and the horizon's starting to change, you've got the efficiency down. Now we gotta pivot, we gotta, we gotta bring in some adaptability and we gotta be willing to just, let's try it. Let's tear up some shit. Let's, let's look foolish. It's all temporary, man. It's all temporary. Look at it like this. I'm gonna leave you with this. Efficiency is what you do now. Adaptability is where you're going next. You gotta dance with both. Use what you got and stay ready for what's coming. Alright, let's get outta here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace.