The most dangerous slide in the board pack is the one that says “we saved money” and stops talking.
Not because saving money is immoral. Because in a well-run theatre of efficiency, the benefit is concentrated, named, and immediate. The damage is dispersed, delayed, and deniable.
The reason numbers people almost always defeat visionaries is simple: a spreadsheet looks like an objective fact, while a strategy just sounds like a speech. Here is the operating system behind that victory - how “efficiency” gets celebrated in reports while the business itself quietly deteriorates.
A Supermarket, an Avocado, and a Miracle of Outsourcing
You know the scene. Self-checkout. You are holding an avocado and hunting for the button that admits it is an avocado. Sometimes you find it. Sometimes you give up and wave at the one remaining human, who is covering six machines and a small riot. And some people (never you, of course) “accidentally” tap onion.
Funny, how 99% of “mistakes” at the bank and the utility company also go against the customer.
At month-end, the supermarket still pays its staff. It does not pay you, even though you just did a shift as a cashier. The work did not vanish. Scanning barcodes still requires a person. The owner of the work changed. Part of it moved to the customer. Part of it moved to the poor souls who unfreeze the machines. And a new job appeared for whoever must explain how the company sold more onions than it had, and almost no avocados, in a way that refuses to match inventory.
In the report to management, one line is clean: payroll savings.
Unlike most organisational outcomes, this one has a single owner. The COO or the CFO. One person collects the credit. Their efficiency.
Now try the other column, the one that never gets a named owner in the same font:
- Who owns the dent in customer experience?
- Who owns the theft?
- Who owns the customers who stop coming?
- Who owns the employees who leave because the job became babysitting six angry queues?
The benefit is concentrated. The damage is scattered.
The benefit is immediate. The damage takes months to show up as “soft” numbers.
The benefit comes with a name on the bonus. The damage can be argued about forever.
That is not a retail curiosity. That is how most corporate efficiency actually works.
The Accounting Trick Nobody Calls an Accounting Trick
A saving that sits in one budget is a hero. A cost that leaks into five other budgets is “noise.”
Cut the cheap overnight shift in customer service, and this quarter’s opex looks disciplined. Next quarter, sales starts muttering about churn, product starts muttering about “unqualified tickets,” and brand starts muttering about Trustpilot. None of those mutters hit the original saver’s scorecard. If they are lucky, they have already been promoted for being “commercial.”
Buy the cheap supplier because procurement is judged on price, not downtime. The factory gets the broken parts; procurement gets the bonus.
Think of a hotel doorman. If you fire them to save money, the financial model assumes the only thing you lost was someone who ‘opens the door.’ The spreadsheet completely ignores all the unmeasured work they actually did - like keeping troublemakers out, making guests feel safe, and managing crises before they happen.
This is why efficiency can mask real business damage without anyone lying in the legal sense. They reported what they were asked to report. They simply declined to report the rest of the system.
Time Is the Accomplice
Dispersed damage would still be visible if it arrived on the same Tuesday as the saving. It rarely does.
Customers forgive a bad checkout once. They change habits over a season. Theft is a reconciliation problem, then a security project, then a footnote. Staff attrition is “the labour market.” A brand that can no longer charge a premium is “competitive intensity.” By the time the story is complete, the original decision has been through two budget cycles and a re-org. Causation is a debate. The saving is a fact.
Boards are especially vulnerable here, because the pack is built to celebrate facts. Debates get parked. “Let’s not relitigate.” Relitigating is the only way you ever connect the avocado to the onion to the empty parking lot.
The Question That Should Be Printed Under Every Saving
Before you applaud a cost line, force a second sentence:
Did we reduce the work, or did we move it - to customers, to another function, to next year, or to a risk we will only recognise once it is expensive?
If the answer is “we moved it,” you do not have efficiency. You have an internal transfer priced at zero, with the invoice sent to people who do not vote on the bonus.
That is the whole trick. It is legal. It is common. It photographs beautifully in a deck. And it is how a company can “improve” on every slide while the business gets worse in the only way that eventually matters: customers, staff, and the right to charge for what you used to be.
- Why the numbers people almost always defeat the visionaries
- The efficiency report that hides the damage
- How to move your company’s work onto your customers (satire)
- The doorman fallacy
- Leads versus the brand you cannot count
- Goodhart’s Law
- The quarter versus the decade
- A KPI audit for boards
If your board pack has a savings line without an owner for the damage, you do not have control. You have a story. I advise boards on the difference. Contact me.