do android consultants dream of electric savings?

Efficiency. I'm all for it.

Except I'm not.

We've been talking about printing a couple of jobs together, projects that are dropping simultaneously and have about the same volume of information. It just makes sense, right? Who doesn't want to do better for their client and help their bottom line?

And then the reality set in. Different consumer expectations. Different impacts required. Different budgets. As you discover each hurdle you jump it, but then there's another, and another, and suddenly efficiency is simply an impediment, a word that gets surrounded by air quotes.

Twice at past agencies, the efficiency bug struck. I tried to cover my mouth and wash my hands a lot in order to give both outbreaks a miss. Not because I'm not open to new ideas, but because inevitably these kinds of efforts at ad agencies lead to wild generalizations that have very little bearing on the reality of the people actually doing the work. I've watched very intelligent and well dressed management consultants who were no older than me recommend actions that could have been gleaned by reading a couple of ROB magazines – or by talking to an art director or production person.

You can't change the basic dynamics of how creatives come up with work, or how account managers need to deal with clients. You can change the tools that these people use for their jobs – this MacBook is way more efficient than an IBM Selectric typewriter, for instance – but not their basic needs, or their need for each other. That's reality.

Efficiency – the idea of changing reality – looks good in meetings. Reality itself? Not so much.

But as that noted management guru Philip K. Dick once wrote, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."