Keeping “Keep It Simple” Simple: Three Methods for Simplifying.

You know him. That really annoying guy who sits in the meeting with the constant refrain: Keep It Simple.

Meanwhile, your head is rightly saying to you: It Just Ain’t That Simple, Pal.

I know that guy too. He’s me!

For years in leadership positions, maybe because of my poor attention span (!), I’ve tried to encourage organisations, meetings, teams and workplace colleagues to simplify their approaches. Whether it’s in politics, a major corporation or a charitable organisation, simplicity increases success.

Or, as My Smartest Ever Colleague, once said: clarity is king. Especially in a complex and chaotic world.

But there’s been other important lessons learned too.

Lesson 1: People are different and each person thinks differently, and everybody has some part of the truth of an issue, problem, risk or opportunity. While it makes sense to simplify, it’s best to do it in a way that brings everybody’s PoV to the task.

Think about the last meeting you were in with people of various professional disciplines: engineers, technicians, business operatives, sales guys and gals, and communicators. Even if they accept simplicity as important, they’d have different ways to approach it.

Lesson 2: Some problems truly aren’t straightforward. They can involve a multiplicity of aspects — ranging from the technological, legal, social, environmental, cultural etc. Often, solutions to them involve not only real in-depth knowledge, but also very significant trade-offs between various costs and benefits. So, striving for simplicity needs to respect such realities.

Think about, say, hazardous waste management. As a society that values a certain lifestyle, we produce inevitable nasties through regular choices: when we get our clothes dry-cleaned or when we get an oil change or after we have a medical procedure. That behavioural byproducts have to go somewhere and be somehow managed. That involves money, logistics, sites, community expectations, equipment, science, regulation and so much more that’s not easily simplified.

So, how do we keep KIS simple — while not losing important aspects needed for good decisions, good processes and good results?

Method A: Why?

Simon Synek, the thinker of the Millennial generation, should be mandatory watching on YouTube for everybody being inducted into any organisation! He reminds us to always pose the question: Why?

Why do we exist as an organisation? Why are we doing this? The answer to why generally dictates every action that follows.

Take the hazardous waste example. In thinking about toxic stuff’s disposal, if our why is to get rid of it as cheaply as possible, that is one (not very nice) course of action. Chuck it the river. If our why is to get rid of it while protecting human health and the environment, that’s another course of action. Design and build appropriate facilities. The why question always cuts through the clutter and the “plethora of permutations” and brings groups back to their simpler core purpose.

Method B: Filter

Filters are cool. They block the yucky stuff and let the good stuff go through. If physical ones are so effective, say like stormwater systems, it’s logical to use intellectual ones too.

When, for example, your group is faced with seven possible options for going forward, and different parts of the group are tugging in different directions based on inevitable self-interest, a decent filter can massively assist with prioritising, transparent decision-making and maintaining group cohesiveness.

I love to use filters that are based on what’s important to an organisation: its objectives, or its values, or the content of its current strategy. Those are usually pretty simple statements. Pull three or four of those out, and have the group score the options before based on alignment. What emerges in the scoring is a much simpler path that has greater buy-in.

Method C: Just Say No.

Every year, a friend’s business did its annual strategy getaway. A highlight of the weekend — in addition to the boozy dinner and bonfire etc — was the Just Say No session. Participants pulled out the current strategy and everyone had to nominate one major thing that the company should no longer do and that they as individual operators/teams should no longer do.

They also lined up all their product/service offerings — call it six major ones. As an exercise of complete discipline and focus, they looked at the profitability / opportunity of the whole list. And, just like in the English Premier League, the bottom one simply got dropped. Relegated. Removed. No sentimentality about strategic value or future potential. Just gone. Perhaps, it’s harsh but it kept my friend’s organisation sticking to the simple and the successful, and made it very appealing when time came to sell out to a bigger firm.