Great leaders know the importance of intentionally creating time for teams to talk
When I first entered Bloomberg’s London headquarters, I was baffled. All elevators went to one place – the sixth floor. Whichever floor you wanted, you had to go via this point to reach your final destination. Yet what at first seemed like puzzling inefficiency is actually intended to foster long-term productivity.
The sixth floor is Bloomberg’s central gathering space, with sweeping views of St Paul’s Cathedral. Large fish tanks inspire wonder. Food and drink stations encourage serendipitous encounters. The entire space catalyzes pauses, greetings and small talk. It’s designed for culture.
While it might be more efficient in the short term to send people directly to the floor where they work, these spontaneous interactions are the connective tissue of an organization. Studies by the MIT Human Dynamics Lab show that the highest-performing teams spend about 50% of their time communicating outside formal meetings. Relationships form, trust grows and collaboration builds. In a world of uncertainty, these are the ingredients for organizational agility.
As leaders rush towards hyper-automation in pursuit of hyper-efficiency, this lesson is more important than ever. Technology is used to remove friction from nearly every task we do. AI apps promise to save us time, optimize our workflows and reduce costs. These are all good things, but they can also result in silos. Without design that intentionally incorporates relationships and interactions, we risk stripping away human connection.
We talk about efficiency in terms of the inputs saved – fewer man-hours or fewer steps – which result in cost savings. But we forget that organizations do not exist merely to minimize inputs. They exist to serve people – customers, patients, families – and to create value for them. If done well, customer loyalty and organizational growth are the consequences.
The objective we should pursue in deploying efficient technology is less, “How do we reduce man-hours?” but rather, “What important human work can we do with the time saved?” The real return on technology lies in how we redeploy those hours into doing what only human employees can do to enhance customer experience.
Our greatest innovations rarely come from streamlined workflows. Instead, they come from perspective-shifting conversations, honest disagreements and supportive relationships. These are the messy, inefficient parts of collaboration. Ironically, these ‘inefficiencies’ are sometimes what leads us to true efficiency in the long-term.
Think about virtual meetings. They have eliminated commute and travel time. We’ve gained convenience, but what have we lost? The in-person interactions that foster connection: the colleague’s insightful comment while walking to the meeting room, the conversations about family and friends, or the relief shared after a tough presentation is successfully navigated.
So, what if we intentionally reintroduced inefficiency? Try beginning a remote weekly meeting with human inefficiencies. What’s one thing that made you smile this week? What inspiring moments have you witnessed? Or simply allow five minutes for informal chatter. These small signals of care will compound over time.
Inefficiency is not your organization’s enemy. Nor is it the antithesis of productivity. Intentionally designed, it can be the soil in which connection, creativity and culture bloom and grow.
Sanyin Siang is a Pratt School of Engineering professor and leads the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics at Duke University
