Americans evaluate processes primarily by efficiency: how quickly, smoothly, and cheaply they accomplish their purposes. “Streamlined,” “lean,” and “optimized” describe valued process characteristics. “Bureaucratic,” “cumbersome,” and “bloated” describe failures.
The question “can we eliminate steps?” accompanies process review. This means process design prioritizes speed and resource conservation. Steps that don’t add clear value face elimination pressure. Redundancies are questioned.
Time spent in processes is scrutinized. Other values—thoroughness, participation, redundancy for reliability—can justify accepting some inefficiency, but efficiency is the default criterion against which departures must be justified. Processes that seem wasteful of time or resources will face pressure for improvement, and “improvement” usually means becoming more efficient.
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