Efficiency by what measure? I like this piece. It speaks to an efficiency measure very often overlooked! The way I see this is everything comes with costs an

Efficiency by what measure? I like this piece. It speaks to an efficiency measure very often overlooked! The way I see this is everything comes with costs and risks. Good systems manage those. But they are not entirely eliminated. And that's the game! Running full capacity is more expensive than some reduced capacity, and what that number is depends on what an organization has incoming. Low latency responses to high priority events very seriously reduces overall costs. Having some degree of capacity to deal with it makes a ton of sense. Invariably, someone else sees that as an unused resource. The argument will be made that Gloria could actually be doing a lot and simply drop it when Tony ends up needing stuff. And while true, task switches are not free, nor is basic human readiness. For Tony, he values knowing Gloria has command of the details and has good processes she has likely used idle time to conceive. For Gloria, jumping into action is expected and normal. She is not haggard into a crappy state every day. Efficiency has different measures. I have seen similar in manufacturing where any capacity left unused seems like money left on the table. But the truth is people are often employing ideas to make their jobs easier, bring quality up, and the like. Sometimes parts need rework. Stuff happens. Doing that may well be transparent to others given there is some capacity to get the rework done.