New Publication: When Efficiency Harms the Mission
Melissa Flagg, PhD
The Andrew W. Marshall Foundation is pleased to present this third essay in a series by Melissa Flagg, PhD, which argues that focusing on mission over efficiency is essential for America’s national security.
We invite you, the reader, to read Melissa’s essay, raise your own questions, come to your own conclusions, and then, please share them with us. You can always reach us at info@andrewwmarshallfoundation.org. We hope you derive insights from her essay and the provocative questions it raises.
In this third essay of my series, “When Efficiency Harms the Mission,” I delve into the hidden costs of prioritizing efficiency above all else. While efficiency often provides tidy, short-term gains, it can undermine the resilience and adaptability needed to respond successfully in when our strengths are rendered less effective.
The essay challenges us to rethink our obsession with centralized control and quantifiable outcomes, proposing a shift toward a decentralized, competitive approach that embraces longstanding American strengths of diversity, tension, and creativity. Drawing from lessons in war, innovation, and policy, I argue that focusing on mission over function is key to true national security.
This series continues to discuss the idea that we are in a moment of transition and our current emerging problems resist our old solutions. It’s critical that we spend some time reflecting on what frameworks we need to foster resilience in an uncertain world rather that jumping straight to solutions.
Melissa Flagg, PhD, is an advisor for the Andrew W. Marshall Foundation and the founder and president of Flagg Consulting LLC. She is also a fellow at the Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC), a visiting fellow at the Perry World House, on the Board of World Forest ID, and a senior advisor to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University where she was previously a senior fellow. Previously, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research, responsible for policy and oversight of Defense Department science and technology programs. She has worked at the State Department, the Office of Naval Research, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Army Research Laboratory. Melissa has served on numerous boards including the National Academy of Sciences Air Force Studies Board and the Department of Commerce Emerging Technology Research Advisory Committee. She holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and a B.S. in Pharmacy.
The Andrew W. Marshall Foundation
February 2025