Throughout my professional career, it is the simplification of projects, process, and departments that have helped me be successful, and it is something that I always strive for. The challenge is that it’s our natural tendency to complicate, or even worse over complicate things, so we really need to maintain a focus on simplicity.
To help you prioritize simplification I wanted to share three benefits that you will gain by taking this path.
Increased Success
Tony Robbins say “Complexity is the enemy of execution”, so when we complicate things we can actually put ourselves, and our teams, in a position where the lack of understanding can actually impede our progress. Even worse, when we lack understanding it can impact our belief that we will be successful, and in my experience people are not afraid of hard work, they are afraid of failure. If we cannot see how we will be successful, then it can impact our confidence, and even cause us to quit.
Keep things simple to improve understanding as this will boost confidence and belief, which increases probability of success,
Increased Efficiency
The simpler a process, the easier it is to optimize. Complexity can introduce too many variables, which can then make it difficult for us to know which components we should change to improve performance. It can also make measuring performance too difficult so that we are not sure whether the changes we have made have had any impact.
Simplicity Reduces Costs
Complexity adds costs by increasing defects, mistakes, and errors, adding unnecessary tasks, and it also impacts our ability to automate or to have the tasks performed by lower cost staff. There are always opportunities, even in complex areas, and we can search the web to find advice, such as this which helps to simplify Management Accounting, which is an area many find difficult.
Don’t be concerned to learn from others, and take best practices, our goal is to simplify and keep costs down and improve performance, not to create unique solutions. Remember it’s much cheaper to use a ready made the wheel than to invent one.
Simplicity takes effort; it is not easy nor our natural tendency, but the more we work at it the better we become.