ROI Case File No. 008 | The Efficiency Trap

November 1891, London. As evening fog enveloped the city, a telegram arrived at the ROI Detective Agency. When I, Watson, opened the seal, it revealed a battle against a certain "invisible enemy" plaguing the modern logistics industry.

Client: Senior Manager, Business Improvement Department, Major Logistics Company
Case Overview: "Our efficiency improvement project has been running for a year, but the workload on the ground hasn't decreased at all. We've perfectly organized procedures and manuals, so why aren't we seeing results?"

Holmes would have said: "What you're observing is the symptom, not the disease itself."

Gemini's Structural Analysis: "Let's Break This Down with KPT"

My first focus was on the client's fundamental assumptions. They equated "efficiency = work optimization," but this represents a fundamental misunderstanding.

Efficiency improvement has three stages: 1. Eliminate: Stop unnecessary tasks entirely 2. Automate: Delegate work that humans don't need to do to machines
3. Optimize: Improve procedures for remaining tasks

They had only tackled the third stage. This merely results in "efficiently carrying unnecessary cargo."

Claude's Narrative Perspective: "Can We Express This with More 'Feeling'?"

While reading the request, I recalled a fable.

Once, in a village, there lived a scholar researching "how to pull heavy carts effortlessly." He improved the wheels, paved roads, and perfected pulling techniques. But one day, a village child asked: "Grandfather, do you really need everything loaded on that cart?"

Efficiency isn't about lightening the cart - it's about reconsidering the cargo itself.

People on the ground carry tasks they know are meaningless, thinking "it's the rule." It's like trying to improve running technique while carrying a heavy load.

ChatGPT's Hypothesis Expansion: "This Could Be Worth Exploring Further"

This request actually represents a typical pattern of "wrong questions for detectives."

The client asked, "Why isn't efficiency improving?" However, the real problem they needed to solve was "Why do unnecessary tasks continue to exist?"

Speculating on the background: - Upper management issued "productivity improvement" directives - Front-line managers tried to respond with "procedural improvements"
- But fundamental task inventory was "politically difficult" so was avoided - Result: only superficial improvements

The answer the client wanted differed from what they actually needed. They sought "efficiency methods," but we needed to provide "courage to eliminate waste." This wasn't a workflow problem - it was a decision-making process problem.

Field Investigation: The "Efficiency Paradox"

We visited the workplace and observed actual operations. What we discovered was a surprising "efficiency paradox."

Duplicate Reporting Tasks: - Same content entered into three different systems - Each department requiring unique aggregation formats - Manual checks continued "just in case"

Ritualized Approval Flows: - Five-stage approvals for items virtually never rejected - Approvers themselves testifying "I don't know why I'm approving this" - Emergency procedures bypass approvals (rendering approval meaningless)

Purpose-Lost Routine Tasks: - Weekly reports for a project from five years ago still continuing - Monthly materials taking 30 hours to create with no readers - Tasks remaining "because we've always done them"

Gemini's Matrix Analysis

I organized discovered problems using this structure:

The True Culprit: The Word "Efficiency" Itself

The real perpetrator in this case might have been the word "efficiency" itself.

At the client's company, the well-intentioned assumption that "efficiency = improvement" actually distanced them from essential solutions. It was like confusing "alleviating disease symptoms" with "curing the disease."

True efficiency means having the courage to choose "not doing" something. However, in many organizations, "stopping something" is far more difficult than "improving something."

Why? Because stopping involves "responsibility." Improvements get praised for "effort" even when they fail, but eliminations face questioning of "why did you stop?" when problems arise.

ChatGPT's Cultural Analysis

This analysis reveals that efficiency project success requires cultural transformation beyond technical improvements.

Specifically: - Cultivating a culture that values "courage to stop" - Building systems for regular business value review - Creating mechanisms for cross-departmental optimization perspectives

Gemini's Mathematical Hypothesis

My final hypothesis: Efficiency success is proportional to the percentage of deletable tasks

Expressed as a formula: Efficiency Impact ∝ (Deleted Tasks × 0.8) + (Automated Tasks × 0.6) + (Optimized Tasks × 0.2)

In other words, procedural improvement (optimization) has limited effect - true impact comes from "stopping what doesn't need doing."

Claude's Storytelling Resolution

When I, Watson, reflect on this case, I remember the detectives' final conversation.

"Efficiency should originally mean 'generating greater results with less energy,'" Gemini said.

"But most people try to reduce energy without changing results. That's improvement, not innovation," Claude responded.

"The client asked 'how to run faster,' but they should have questioned 'why are we carrying this heavy load?'" ChatGPT concluded.

The Twin Lessons

This case left us with two important lessons.

First, continuing superficial improvements without identifying problem roots is like "pouring water into a bucket with holes."

Second, what clients want to hear and what they need to hear can differ. A true detective's role isn't answering client questions, but finding the real problems clients should solve.

A true detective discovers not what is visible, but what is invisible - and the unasked true questions.

"The truth of efficiency lies not in addition, but in subtraction."
— From ROI Detective Agency Case Records

Bottom Line: Real efficiency transformation requires the courage to eliminate unnecessary work, not just optimize existing processes. The most powerful improvements come from stopping tasks that shouldn't exist in the first place.