You've been here before

A tight deadline. A leadership mandate. Do more with less. Faster, leaner, cheaper.

So you implement quick fixes. Standardise procedures. Introduce new digital tools. The initial results are promising.

But mere weeks later:

• Support tickets are climbing
• Staff are increasingly frustrated
• The "faster" process introduced new pain points elsewhere

You're back where you started, only this time with the growing feeling that you've created more problems than you solved.

Why most efficiency initiatives fail

The issue? Most organisations pursue efficiency as their primary goal. This backwards approach is why so many initiatives ultimately fail.

We've written previously about the sweet spot between customer experience and operational efficiency. Traditional wisdom says that customer experience and efficiency are two opposing forces – that efficient organisations don't waste resources chasing customer satisfaction.

The reality is that when you design for efficiency alone, both experience and efficiency often suffer.

Efficiency isn't the goal, it's a by-product of good design

Instead of pursuing efficiency directly, start with what people really need. Break down your problem to first principles and rebuild your services around human needs.

When you do this, something remarkable happens: efficiency emerges naturally by eliminating friction, confusion, and workarounds that create waste.

Let's look at how this works in practice.

How to succeed: First principles thinking

Real problem solving requires a first principles approach.

First principles are the most basic truths or facts about something—ideas that can't be broken down any further. When you use first principles thinking, you try to understand a problem by looking at these basic facts, instead of just copying what others have done or following common beliefs.

In a business context, first principles thinking involves reducing services to their fundamental purpose and rebuilding them around what actually matters.

Here's how it works in three steps:

Step 1: See what's really happening

Before rebuilding, you need to understand what's really happening:

• Map the entire ecosystem, not just the visible process. Include all stakeholders, systems, and dependencies.
• Identify value-creating vs. administrative steps. Which activities directly contribute to customer or business outcomes?
• Understand effort holistically, not just time. This includes cognitive load, emotional strain, and resource consumption.
• Find friction points where complexity accumulates or handoffs break down.

This essential diagnostic work reveals what's truly causing inefficiency, and it's rarely what leadership initially assumes.

Step 2: Challenge core assumptions

The main benefit of first principles thinking is that it breaks you out of incremental thinking and opens up possibilities for transformative change.

Once you have a clear understanding of the current state, apply these first principles questions:

• What outcome are we trying to achieve?
• What do people need, regardless of technology?
• Where do people experience the most friction?
• Does the current process serve its intended purpose? Should it exist at all?

Step 3: Design and implement around human needs first

With assumptions challenged, it's time to redesign and implement with people at the centre:

• Centre on user journeys, not departmental functions
• Simplify to the essential, eliminating unnecessary complexity
• Choose technology that supports the process, rather than dictating it
• Build capabilities and alignment so people can work effectively in new ways
• Create feedback loops to identify issues early and drive improvements

This human-centred approach naturally produces more efficient systems because it removes the friction points that create waste. When processes align with how people actually think and work, efficiency follows – not through mandate, but through removing the barriers that were making systems inefficient in the first place.

First principles thinking in action

We've seen this first principles design-led approach succeed in our work across multiple sectors.

Reducing administrative burden for school staff

The NSW Department of Education faced a complex policy environment with 361 documents that staff struggled to navigate. Rather than just streamlining policies, they applied first principles design:

• They mapped how school staff actually work and make decisions
• They challenged assumptions about what policies were truly necessary
• They created a policy structure centred on common business and user goals

The result: Document count halved, policies aligned with how people really work, and teachers gained more time to focus on teaching.

Improving access to personal information in traumatic contexts

The Department of Defence needed to transform how members accessed their personal information – a process that was often confusing and retraumatising. Instead of just digitising the existing process, they:

• Mapped the entire ecosystem, including the needs of users
• Questioned fundamental assumptions about information access
• Co-designed a trauma-informed approach with members, veterans and their families

The outcome: 47% less customer effort, 61% more consistency and a stressful experience turned supportive.

From Design to Natural Efficiency

When organisations follow this approach, they consistently discover the same pattern:

1. Start with insight → Understand the ecosystem and where friction exists
2. Design with intent → Create solutions based on human needs
3. Create efficiency → Watch as natural efficiencies emerge from well-designed systems

This design-led approach consistently produces both experience and efficiency gains. Of course, measuring these connections is its own important dimension, one that requires linking experience improvements to operational and financial outcomes in meaningful ways.

The Bottom Line

If your team is under pressure to go faster and cheaper, press pause.

Efficiency isn't something you chase directly, it's what naturally follows when you design systems that work better for people.

Ask what truly matters. Strip away assumptions. Design for people, not headcount.

Because when you do, efficiency stops being the target. It becomes the reward.