Given the inflation, tariffs, and ever-present uncertainty looming over the business environment, organizations face an urgent challenge to accomplish more with less. This is a very simple concept at face value, but what actually happens when we pursue every avenue to increase efficiency?
Rather than scrambling to find one efficiency opportunity to rule them all, executives should adopt a strategy of “efficiency through a thousand cuts.” By applying the “5 Rs” (retain, remove, reduce, replace, rebuild) and augmenting the human workforce with AI agents, organizations can incrementally improve efficiency and increase revenue at scale.
After all, a series of 1% efficiency gains can add up to millions of dollars in revenue and opportunity cost recovery.
Introduction to Digital Friction
It is a well-known fact that humans cannot be efficient. all time. We get distracted. We lose focus. But much of worker inefficiency is not their own fault. Rather, because of that digital friction.
Consider how much time is wasted at scale by employees navigating bloated technology stacks. Whether it's switching from platform to platform, remembering which apps are used for certain tasks, or simply waiting for legacy systems to load, that time all adds up.
Employees also unintentionally waste time performing purely administrative and repetitive tasks. There are certainly other, more valuable, strategic tasks to be done, but they get bogged down in administrative tasks.
This collective period of laziness, wasted time, and frustration is known as digital friction, and it's not only inefficient, it's also expensive. As of March 2025, the average private employer spends $45.38 per hour per employee. For an organization with 100 employees experiencing just 30 minutes of digital friction per day, that's well over $500,000 in lost value per year.
Fortunately, there are ways leaders can chip away at digital friction and regain inadvertently lost value.
5 R's
One of the most effective ways to improve your organization's efficiency at scale is to perform an audit of your technology stack. Most organizations probably have a ton of unnecessary, redundant, or unused apps and platforms taking up space and creating digital friction. A detailed, systematic audit helps technology leaders and their teams identify which platforms to keep, which to retire, and which to change.
Every component of your technology stack must be evaluated and assigned one of the five R's:
- Retention: Leave the tool alone
- remove: eliminate tools
- reduce: Limit use/scope
- Exchange: find a better alternative
- Rebuild: Leave the tool as is, but modify it to suit your needs
This exercise forces teams to streamline the use of each item in their technology stack, rather than getting stuck in “the way things have always been done.” It may take a lot of time and effort, but it doesn't have to be done all at once.
But when it's all said and done, technology leaders will have built a modernized, streamlined technology stack that solves real problems and doesn't hinder their teams from performing at their best. From there, prioritize training your team on new processes and tools, and celebrate achieving new levels of efficiency and ease in your daily workflows.
Automation and optimization
Even with a newly streamlined technology stack, there are still plenty of opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce digital friction. This is where automation and optimization come into play.
When employees can spend more time on strategic, value-adding tasks, organizations can derive significantly more value from their investments. this is not a problem transform With overwhelming efforts, employees' daily lives (pronounced “overturned”). It's about gradually delegating appropriate tasks to automation/agent tools.
Perhaps an administrative assistant can help schedule meetings. Perhaps entry-level employees could spend less time entering data and more time learning about analysis and adding value. These are tasks that are perfect for AI agents, and delegating them at scale can save organizations hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars each year. The ultimate goal is to upgrade employees from “doers” to “evaluators.”
every win counts
Efficiency through 1000 cuts is about systematically and incrementally improving an organization's efficiency using a common-sense approach, rather than something game-changing, innovative, or revolutionary.
It is important for leaders to maintain and support this perspective, and it will be contagious. When a team sees a manager or director deciding how things should be; Just a little more By being efficient and celebrating when you achieve it, that energy spreads and employees begin to examine their workflows and seek further ways to improve.
This philosophy is a gift that keeps on giving, but it is never truly complete. This is a small but powerful idea that can save you millions of dollars, motivate your team, and drive continuous innovation.
