In transformation programmes, efficiency gains are low hanging fruit. A dirty word within today’s glorious growth agenda. But what if efficiency IS a growth enabler. What then?
Look, every time we get better at using something, we end up using more of it, not less. It’s what consumers do.
James Watt made the steam engine more efficient, and guess what, coal use went up. We’re building faster data centres for more compute demand to keep pace with our increasing AI needs. And when electricity, the mother of all utilities got cheaper, no surprises here, we found more things to power. It’s what we do as consumers. And those efficiency gains get swallowed up by demand growth. So what?
Well, the same thing happens inside companies. You automate a process, free up capacity, and six months later that capacity is full again. New requests. Higher expectations. A bigger backlog.
Growth Enabler
Economists call this the Jevons Paradox. But you do not need the label to recognise the pattern. Efficiency rarely reduces demand. More often, it expands it. Technologists laugh about how less is more! So what does that mean in practice?
If you are building a business case for automation on cost savings alone, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. Costs do not always fall in the way people expect. Instead, output rises. The organisation does more. That is NOT a failure. In many cases, that is the real value. But it is a different story from the one that usually gets sold.
So a better frame is this: efficiency is not just a cost cutter. It is a growth enabler. And own it!
The real question is not, how much will we save? No, no, no! It is, what can we now do that we could not do before? Efficiency raises the ceiling.
That shift changes everything. It changes what you measure, what you promise, and what you choose to build next.
