Recently, the leadership team of an American supermarket chain decided that their business needed to get a lot more efficient.
So they embraced their digital transformation with zeal.
Out went the teams supervising meat, veg, bakery, and in came an algorithmic task allocator.
Now, instead of people working together, each employee went, clocked in, got assigned a task, did it, came back for more.
This was scientific management on steroids, standardizing and allocating work.
It was super efficient.
Well, not quite, because the task allocator didn't know when a customer was going to drop a box of eggs, couldn't predict when some crazy kid was going to knock over a display, or when the local high school decided that everybody needed to bring in coconuts the next day.
(Laughter) Efficiency works really well when you can predict exactly what you're going to need.
But when the anomalous or unexpected comes along -- kids, customers, coconuts -- well, then efficiency is no longer your friend.
This has become a really crucial issue, this ability to deal with the unexpected, because the unexpected is becoming the norm.
