I was recommended this book by a colleague in a work book club and could really see why. I particularly liked the point that most of us, as managers, actually create our own waves of complexity through the organisation whilst simultaneously complaining about everyone else's.
On the positive side this means we can all do something about it, whatever our role we can make our lives easier and the same for those around us.
The book looks a four main categories of complexity and suggests ways to attack them (simply)
Locn. 80-81 Despite our recent economic struggles, the global economy is not going to get less complex. If anything, it will grow more difficult to understand. In addition, the pace of technological innovation and breakthrough will continue to increase, which will also add to complexity.
Locn. 137-41 Trying to get things done in organizations today often feels like walking in quicksand. If you are a manager or an executive who is anxious to get results, you know what I mean. There are too many meetings, too many reports, too much information, and too many stakeholders-all of whom have different views on what should be done and how. Processes don't work or take too long. Decisions are delayed or unclear. Presentations go on forever. And the boundaries between home and work, online and offline, have broken down with e-mails and cell phones and 24/7 availability. Complexity is out of control and getting worse-and it compromises our ability to be effective.
Locn. 211-12 to start developing a simplification strategy, you need to understand the four sources of complexity in organizations (figure 1-1): 1. Structural mitosis 2. Product and service proliferation 3. Process evolution 4. Managerial behavior
Locn. 587-89 The origin of the Lindex was an article Calhoun had read about the organization structure of the Canadian civil service.' Calhoun adapted this article's formula for assessing functional health (based on the average length of communication chains from the top to the bottom of a hierarchy) so that his managers could compute their own Lindex scores.
Locn. 666-67 managing your organization's product portfolio entails much the same challenge. It is difficult to be selective and to choose between alternatives that all look good. As a result, many organizations get caught up in the trap of trying to manage far too many products and services.
Locn. 678-81 on the one hand, managers are told to be entrepreneurial and creative and stay close to their markets-in other words, drive growth through constantly coming up with new ways of delighting customers. Many companies in fact have incentives for new product ideas and set goals for deriving a certain amount of revenue from new products. On the other hand, managers are also told to increase the sales volume of existing products and services, leverage the existing product and expense base, and build the brand and image of current offerings. So managers and employees (and customers) naturally develop emotional attachments to current products. With these two sets of messages in mind, most companies avoid making choices.
Locn. 714-16 System complexity is the extent to which your products and services must integrate with those of other suppliers to create value for a customer. Obviously, some products or services are stand-alone and don't need other products to function. But many are components that need to be combined or used with others in some way-and organizations need to pay attention to the complexity that this can create.
Locn. 745-46 He suggests that product simplification is a matter of "more is less"-fewer features, fewer buttons, fewer distractions-so that the customer can get the most out of the product.'
Locn. 886 • Local differences: As organizations evolve, the same processes are often done differently in different places.
Locn. 887-88 • Multiplication of steps and loops: As they encounter unique or recurring problems, processes tend to acquire more steps, more controls, and more people in the pursuit of solutions. Such solutions are rarely abandoned,
Locn. 889-90 • Informality of process: A third source of complexity is lack of rigor about how a process really is supposed to be carried out.
Locn. 891-92 • Lack of cross functional or cross-unit transparency: People naturally tend to focus on their part of the process rather than the whole,
Locn. 939-43 This focus on control is based on the hierarchical notion that all information needs to flow up the chain of command for approval. Often however, the more high-level approvals there are, the further the managers are from the real data and the ability to actually add value. So not only are the reviews and controls not worth much, but they also slow down the process and reduce the empowerment and sense of accountability of the people closer to the decision. In fact, when there are many layers of approval, people on the ground may not give an issue the proper attention, because they assume that someone further up the line will catch anything they miss.
Locn. 1029-31 The main value of process mapping is to allow stakeholders-all of whom see the process from different vantage points-to develop a common view of what's currently being done and what might be done differently.
Locn. 1086-88 The purpose of the rapid-results approach is to use people's natural bias toward action as a catalyst for immediate process simplification. In many situations, analysis and study can become excuses for maintaining the status quo and avoiding real process change: the "we can't do anything until we have all the data"
Locn. 1122-24 The key to using these tools to drive process simplification, however, is to make sure to align the what, why, and how: what processes are being addressed, why they have become overly complex, and how best to tackle them.
Locn. 1183-86 Robert Kaplan and Rob Kaiser, leadership consultants who have studied and worked with thousands of managers, contend that the shortcoming of most managers often is not in what they do-but in what they "over-do." I Managers succeed in their careers by applying certain behaviors and skills that tend to work for them, both in their personal lives and in business. With the reinforcement of success in mind, they continue these behaviors and build on them when moving into new or more responsible positions. Over time, a manager can become reliant on these behaviors as a core skill set
Locn. 1196-99 Consider the following question. Imagine that your CEO asks you to take on a special one-day-a-week assignment working directly with her. It involves interesting travel and some exciting work-but requires you to do the rest of your job in the remaining time. Would you take the assignment? I've asked this question of thousands of managers over the years, and 99 percent of them say they would take the assignment and figure out a way to do their regular jobs more efficiently. And in discussing why, they acknowledge that at least 20 percent of their time is regularly taken up with things that keep them busy and comfortable, but that don't add much value.
Locn. 1207-9 Much of the managerially generated complexity in organizations comes from overdone behaviors-from too much of a good thing and the associated avoidance of its opposite. This dynamic is difficult to see because managers tend to think they are doing the right thing in the right way. But too much of one right thing, coupled with too little of its opposite, is often wrong.
Locn. 1349-50 a RACI chart-which is a simple way of setting out who has responsibility, who has ultimate accountability, who needs to be consulted, and who needs to be informed.
Locn. 1382-84 you can build a request for feedback into the end of your message. With individuals, you can simply ask them to summarize the key points that they heard; in a group, you can ask a few people to do the same; and with a presentation, you can ask for written feedback or have a few volunteers speak out.
Locn. 1389-90 So instead of clear and simple communication, presentations too often become reports masquerading as slides, or cuteness competitions, or ways of preventing instead of facilitating dialogue. To counter this trend, one firm instituted the "one-minute drill" for presentations-forcing people to reduce their message to its essence, in slides that could be presented in only a minute.
Locn. 1393-96 Meetings are not just a fact of life in organizations; they're a way of life. Some managers can spend up to 80 percent of their time in meetings, particularly in organizations that are heavily matrixed, global, and process focused. Unfortunately, as most managers will attest, much of the time spent in meetings is unproductive, frustrating, and wasteful.
Locn. 1412-13 E-mail might seem insignificant or innocuous, but inbox overload is a serious source of organizational complexity.
Locn. 1415-17 For instance, when a manager sends large numbers of people a message on issues that many of them don't need to know about, it just burdens colleagues with low-value information that distracts them from matters more important. A frequent culprit is the "reply all" button, which can create hundreds of e-mails, often about insignificant topics such as meeting schedules.
Locn. 1421-23 If you've read this far-and thoughtfully considered the twenty-two specific behaviors described in this chapter-you now realize that you may be a prime source of complexity in your organization. But if these managerial behaviors and others like them are largely unconscious and driven by psychological factors, how can they be overcome?
Locn. 1440-41 To launch the effort, the managing directors sent a note to all the vice presidents, asking them to identify ways that they could be more effective both individually and collectively.
Locn. 1463-64 Here are a few steps that you can take right now to drive simplicity in your own leadership role: 1. Fill out the questionnaire in table 5-1, and use it to reflect on your own behavior.
Locn. 1465-66 2. Share your questionnaire results and thinking with a few other managers or colleagues who know you well.
Locn. 1468-69 3. From your own reflection and the feedback from colleagues or a coach, select one or two specific ways that you can experiment with making things simpler by changing your own behavior.
Locn. 1469-71 These don't need to be huge changes-start small and gain some confidence. For example, try to change your e-mail patterns or the way that you plan and run meetings. Once you have some success, share what you've done with your colleagues or coach and identify additional simplification opportunities.
Locn. 1471-72 4. If possible, recruit others to go through the same process of reflection, experimentation, and learning-and meet with them as a group to share progress and ideas.
Locn. 1473-74 5. Finally, if you are in a position to drive simplification on a broader basis in your company, you can insist that your management team go through the process of reflection, experimentation, and learning together.
Locn. 1541-45 Lloyd Trotter, a former vice chairman of GE, describes the thought process like this: "We teach managers that they need to start with the `answer,' which is that their business needs double-digit earnings improvement every quarter and every year. They quickly realize that sales growth without leverage won't do it. So they have to figure out how to drive growth while increasing productivity. We don't complicate it: Material comes in the front door and products go out the back door. We have to get rid of any waste in the middle while also figuring out how to have the products or services be more valuable for our customers."
Locn. 1699-1700 It might sound obvious, but simplification won't happen if everyone approaches it differently. You need to create a common framework and language for simplification, and then train everyone on it. This not only gets everyone on the same page, but also creates widespread capacity for action and multiplication of results.
Locn. 1704-5 In addition to being orchestrated from the center, these training efforts had several other features that turn out to be critical for sustaining simplification over time:
• They propelled people into action to produce real results.
• They deliberately aimed at producing measurable change in a few months or less.
• They were rolled out quickly across the whole company and run largely by in-house people.
• They were so interactive as to be mind-bending.
Locn. 1722-24 In reality, however, organizational performance and reward systems are usually not so straightforward; they encompass multiple goals, measures that don't always reflect real behavior, and incentives that are not always directly linked to either the measure or the goals. The result is the confused and counterproductive practice that my colleague Steve Kerr refers to as "rewarding A while asking for B."
Locn. 1771-72 Simplification doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't have to be difficult. You can do a lot today and the next day to make your organization simpler for yourself, your colleagues, and your customers-even
Locn. 1777-80 most managers act as though they live in a box-a box that limits what they can do. Obviously, part of the box is determined by official limits set out in job descriptions, hierarchical arrangements, and formal work rules. But a large part of the box, perhaps even most of it, is self-created and self-imposed. We work within our comfort zones, doing what we think we should do or what we think other people want us to do. But most of the time, we don't question, challenge, or test those limits, which makes them self-perpetuating.
Locn. 1841-43 Most people in organizations want simplicity-it's not a hard sell. If you can help them understand how they can get better results while also making their lives easier, they'll listen. And if you can move them into action, you'll be a hero. The only limitation is you-your own definition of the box around your job. Expand the box. Expand the impact.
Locn. 1863-65 Hold Up a Mirror Much of the complexity in organizations is unconscious and unintentional. We tend to accept it and learn to live with it, and after a while, we don't even see it anymore. That's why a mirror is a powerful tool-it helps people see things about themselves that they can't see on their own. The diagnostic instruments included in this book, particularly the questionnaire in chapter 1, will help
Locn. 1868-70 Present a Business Case While complexity is often annoying and uncomfortable, the real reason for attacking it has to be rooted in business results and outcomes. Otherwise, simplicity will remain a value to aspire to, rather than a real driver of change and improvement.
Locn. 1878-79 Stimulate Fresh Thinking from the Outside In Remember the importance of designing your organization, your products, and your processes with your customers in mind. Simplicity often directly correlates with your ability to align with what your customers want, when they want it, and how they want it.
Locn. 1888-89 Build a Coalition You can certainly have an impact on your organization by modeling simplification in your own area. Other managers will take notice and your innovations may spread organically,
Locn. 1901-4 Demonstrate That Simplicity Makes a Difference Perhaps implicit in the first four tactics is the idea that you actually have to do something. Simplicity is great to talk about. Most people find it cathartic to share their complexity war stories. But nothing builds momentum for simplification as much as real success. If you're looking for one takeaway from this book, this is it: the way to make things simpler in your organization is to start simplifying. Just do it.
Locn. 1910-11 tools and approaches (which were first introduced in chapter 1) are listed here again as a reminder (table 7-1).
Locn. 1912-13 As a way of selecting which tool to use, consider the variables pictured in figure 7-2.1 What is the business result that needs to be achieved?
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