Seven Strategies for Simplifying Your Organization: the Catch-22 of organizational complexity is that most managers don't have the time to fix it. “One of the patterns that causes or exacerbates complexity is the tendency to not speak up about poor practices. This is particularly true when people hesitate to challenge more senior people who unintentionally cause complexity through poor meeting management, unclear assignments, unnecessary emails, over-analysis, or other bad managerial habits.” So let’s talk more about the negative impact of complexity on both productivity and workplace morale - in seven steps particularly for managers who are already over-worked, stressed, and can barely keep up with their current workload. [Reproduced from Harvard Business Review] Seven Strategies for Simplifying Your Organization [by Ron Ashkenas 05.28.13 co-authored with Lisa Bodel] Over the past several years we have heard hundreds of managers talk about the negative impact of complexity on both productivity and workplace morale. This message has been reinforced by the findings of major CEO surveys conducted by IBM and KPMG, both of which identified complexity as a key business challenge. Agreeing on complexity as a problem is one thing, but doing something about it is quite another — particularly for managers who are already over-worked, stressed, and can barely keep up with their current workload. In fact, the Catch-22 of complexity is that most managers don't feel that they have the time to focus on it: Having the problem precludes the ability to solve it. With this dilemma in mind, we think it's important for managers to have a strategic framework that they can use to address complexity in their own areas, at their own pace, in their own ways. So to that end, we would like to offer a "simple" seven-step simplification strategy. While we present these sequentially, they can be implemented in any order, depending on where you might be able to make the greatest difference most quickly. Over time however, it's important to do all seven so that simplicity becomes a core capability of your organization and not just a one-time project. [more] Over the past several years we have heard hundreds of managers talk about the negative impact of complexity on both productivity and workplace morale. This message has been reinforced by the findings of major CEO surveys conducted by IBM and KPMG, both of which identified complexity as a key business challenge.
Agreeing on complexity as a problem is one thing, but doing something about it is quite another — particularly for managers who are already over-worked, stressed, and can barely keep up with their current workload. In fact, the Catch-22 of complexity is that most managers don't feel that they have the time to focus on it: Having the problem precludes the ability to solve it. With this dilemma in mind, we think it's important for managers to have a strategic framework that they can use to address complexity in their own areas, at their own pace, in their own ways. So to that end, we would like to offer a "simple" seven-step simplification strategy. While we present these sequentially, they can be implemented in any order, depending on where you might be able to make the greatest difference most quickly. Over time however, it's important to do all seven so that simplicity becomes a core capability of your organization and not just a one-time project.
This post's coauthor, Lisa Bodell, is the founder and CEO of FutureThink and the author of Kill the Company. More blog posts by Ron Ashkenas More on: Leadership, Managing people, Organizational culture Ron Ashkenas Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting, and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective.
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