Dam, chew better believe it

Inefficiency is so endemic in most organizations, people don’t even realize how unproductive they really are.

Not until there’s an external comparison that makes them realize, wow, we need to get our act together.

The other day I found a news story that brought me immense joy. Here’s the headline.

Beavers build planned dams in protected landscape area, while local officials still seeking permits.

This beaver colony gained overnight fame by building several dams in the protected landscape area, creating a natural wetland exactly where it was needed. It saved local authorities millions of dollars, and had the public cracking jokes about public administration and red tape.

Humans would have had to get building permits, get the building project approved, and find the money for it. But the beavers beat them to it. They built the dams with zero project documentation and for free.

When I first read this news story, my first thought was, I wonder what the beavers would say about all this?

So I contacted the international wetland conservancy, and they put me in touch with their spokesperson. Chip Whiskerstone, the chief structural engineer of the colony, started off by saying:

We weren’t trying to circumvent bureaucracy, we just saw a problem and fixed it. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the humans for being evolutionarily inefficient. Humans take forever to do anything. They have meetings about meetings, memos about memos, and still nothing gets done. California spent seventeen billion dollars in the past two decades on a high speed rail, and it isn’t even finished yet.

My guys would have executed that project in three weeks, tops. And they use their teeth to build entire ecosystems! All we had to do was pay them in acorns and a long term equity stake in future dam expansions, and the job was done.

Chuckie over here worked six double shifts in a row, he didn’t once try to unionize over the lunch break policy.

All I can say is, dam. Chew better believe it.

Do you realize how unproductive you are? Have you ever seen a person with fewer resources than you, but who is moving forward nonetheless?