Gauri Chhabra
Have you ever wondered why some of our great leaders continue to inspire us? There are names like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, APJ Abdul Kalam who are able to spark and ignite a fire in our hearts. What do these people have in common? One singular factor is – simplicity.
In this complex and wired world, simplicity is a lost and long forgotten art, so much so that simplicity started being equated with stupidity. The clichéd KISS (Keep it short and simple) wore the garb of Keep it Simple and Stupid. However, with rising stress levels in people and organizations, it is time for us to go back to the basics and embrace the simplicity we had once shed like an old bark.
A few days ago I happened to attend an HR Summit where I met with C level executives of companies with a global footprint. Interestingly, most of them are grappling with the complexity of systems and processes and yearn to go back to simplicity. Somehow in the conversation with these many HR leaders around the world, after we talked about redoing performance management, improving leadership, restructuring HR, and using technology – they all started to say, “How do we make things more simple?”
And as I came back and thought more about it, I realized that simplicity is the next big thing in Leadership and business in general. Hear me out.
We have inadvertently become far too enamored with our technology, mobile phones, social networks, photos, video sharing tools, and all the various competency models, frameworks, process diagrams, and workflows we design in HR. We are “process designers” by nature, and we always take a management or leadership problem and try to design an elegant and complete solution.
Know what? In most cases the answer is to do much less.
Need for simplicity:
Understanding the importance of simplicity is nonetheless critical to your success. Consider all the presentations you’ve attended in the last few weeks; was it the people who were able to articulate their positions in a simple and straight forward fashion, or the individuals that made things complex and tedious that got traction with their ideas? It has been my experience that the more complicated, difficult, or convoluted an explanation is, that one or both of the following issues are at play, one- the person speaking is a horrible communicator, or two- the person speaking really doesn’t possess a true command of their subject matter. It is one thing to toss around the latest buzz-words or to have the most complex flow chart, but it is quite another thing to actually possess such a deep and thorough understanding of your topic that you can make even the most complex issues easy to understand.
Here’s one example. A few months ago, we decided to revamp one of our Laboratory Information System( LIS) software from a legacy technology base to a new, lean system on ASP.NET MVC. So, we started building a whole new curriculum for their engineering and manufacturing teams focused on hundreds of detailed competencies. We interviewed the senior software architects and manufacturers, identified all the competencies, trying to figure out how to assess and develop people toward these competencies. The result is a dauntingly complicated project – one which may or may not work, but will definitely take a while and is likely to become out of date by the time it is finished.
Suddenly we realized that we were just making things a bit too complicated and it was not leading us anywhere.So, we took a U turn and decided to apply our new “Four E’s” model of development education, experience, exposure, and environment. It greatly simplified the problem and help the team move away from “process design” toward “solution to problem.”
It turns out the mantra of “simplicity” applies everywhere. Do you need a nine step performance appraisal process? Of course,not. Today’s modern solution involves only two or three steps: periodic checkins and end-of-year review and development planning. Take other steps and move them into another process at another time .Do we need a massive annual engagement survey which takes 3 months and hundreds of thousands of rupees to complete? Probably not – what we need is a short, agile, periodic process to collect feedback at all levels online. Do we need a course catalogue with 7,000 courses? Probably not – most companies tell us there are only 5% of the courses that matter and the rest are there “just in case.” That wastes people’s time and makes them feel even more “overwhelmed.”
Do we need HR software with hundreds of features and cascading menus? Probably not – we need simple “apps” that do one thing only which are easy to use on mobile devices. Do we need 12 leadership competencies or can we strip it down to four or five? Do we need 10 mission statements or can we boil it down to three? The need for simplicity is everywhere.
Simplicity is difficult:
Now I”m not saying that you become simple and stupid as a leader and frame simplistic processes. No. Simplicity is very hard to arrive at. In order to be simple you need to have a thorough understanding of the subject matter. And your systems have to be very profound and well designed. But we have to spend much more time figuring out what we “don’t need” and focus on the few things we “do need.”
The best way to design a solution is to ask yourself? What is the business problem or goal we’re trying to achieve? (ie. increase sales productivity),What are the top 2-3 talent challenges holding us back (this is the hard work), What simple new process, tool, technology, steps can we add?
One of the most effective ways to order your world is to simplify everything you encounter. However, the problem for many is keeping it simple often becomes very difficult when our basic human nature is to over-complicate everything we touch. In thinking about the people I respect the most, to the one, they possess the uncanny ability to take the most complicated of issues and simplify them.
Focus on the minimal:
Follow Pareto’s principle – focus on the top 20% and the rest 80% will fall in place. Do not dilute your and your organization’s strength by being all over the place. A very advanced healthcare company who is one of the world’s leaders in talent analytics told me earlier this year that they use analytics to focus on only one problem at a time. Their consultants go into the healthcare facilities and look for one single problem to work on. It may be nurse turnover, too much overtime, or maybe its poor patient ratings. They then spend 3-4 months studying that one problem – and they come back with no more than 2-3 recommendations for improvement. They do not develop a massive program with dozens of steps, pert charts, and long drawn out meetings. Why? Because they know that in their environment line managers will only have time to do one or two things new…. so they spend months and months figuring what those key, “simple” but very profound changes should be.
Simplicity saves time:
It has been my experience that the only things that “complexity” is synonymous with are increased costs, more time consumptionand failed implementations. There is an old saying in the software development world that states “usability drives adoptability”. If applications are complex and do not save time, they will never be accepted no matter how much of good coding has gone behind that. You don’t solve complicated matters by adding to the complexity. The most effective way to deal with complexity is to strip it away by addressing it with simplicity.
Another benefit of simplicity is that it serves as a key driver of focus, which enables greater efficiency, productivity, and better overall performance. Keeping things simple allows you to focus on one thing at a time without the distractions that complexity breeds by its nature alone. I would suggest that you break down every key area of your business and attempt to simplify your processes, initiatives, and offerings.
As a C-level executive you must focus on simplifying your day in order to maximize your effectiveness. By simplifying everything from the information and reports you view, to your communications protocol, to your agenda, to your decisioning structure, you will be better able to operate in today’s unnecessarily complex world.
We don’t need complex solutions – they are hard to build and they probably won’t stick. Take lots of time studying the problem, and then come up with a simple but profound solution. Life has gotten very complicated over the last few years – now is the time to think simple – again…
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