As we round out the first month of 2015 – typically a time when people abandon their goals and settle on failing on the resolutions they made – ask yourself, "how is my New Year’s Resolution working for me?" Maybe you decided to become a better manager, but realized the philosophy you chose is not motivating your team or improving efficiencies.
You are not alone – don't give up yet!
Many people have tried applying the "best" management thinking of their day to improve their organizations. But time after time these “best practices” failed to create value. Instead of helping to manage the growing complexity of business, all of these supposed solutions only seemed to make things worse, less effective and more complicated.
The truth is that the management practices you learned in business school are outdated. Complication doesn’t work in 2015. There is better way.
Through my on-the-ground work with organizations and incredibly talented people, I have developed and battle-tested a new approach to management: Smart Simplicity. The world is getting more complex and organizations generally respond by getting more complicated. More time is spent managing work and less time actually doing it. Companies respond to the new complexity of business by increasing their internal complicatenedness, which only hinders productivity and innovation while disengaging their people. Smart Simplicity is a set of principles designed to better manage business complexity while reducing organizational complication, by making people more autonomous, cooperative and able to solve problems.
The six main tenets of Smart Simplicity are the focus of my book, Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated, which I published last year with my BCG colleague, Peter Tollman.
1. Understand what your people do.
While most management approaches add unnecessary functions and procedures, Smart Simplicity begins by examining the day-to-day reality of how people behave and why. The central insight? If people do what they do it is because it is the best solution they find to deal with their situation – otherwise they would do something else! Actions and decisions constitute "individually useful strategies." They act rationally, even if their combined actions often create problems for the organization. The essence of Smart Simplicity is to understand that, and then change the conditions inside the organization so people’s individually useful behaviors align with what you need them to do.
2. Identify the “integrators” who make cooperation happen, and empower them.
These people are situated at the centers of tension caused by opposing interests – hotel receptionists, for example, who balance the demands of impatient customers with the constraints of other hotel workers. Their unique position allows them to spur cooperation – in order to push through the problem at hand and get the job done.
3. Give more people more power.
Power isn't finite, and if managers empower people to make decisions in the organization, they can think, act and solve problems on their own. Creating power doesn't necessarily look "strategic" – it can be as simple as giving store mangers control over staffing. But it can have a real impact on performance, and can make your organization more agile, responsive and competitive.
4. Take away resources.
Having fewer resources means people have no choice but to rely on each other, which helps to foster cooperation. Think of a household with several people living in it. If those people own multiple televisions, there is no need for them to cooperate about what to watch. But, if you take away all the televisions except one, they will have to cooperate to decide between baseball and Masterpiece Theatre.
5. Actions have consequences and living with the consequences boosts performance.
People work better when they see the consequences of their actions–and have to live with them. A car manufacturer’s products were famously hard to repair, so the company sent its engineers to work as mechanics in the repairs department. Confronted with the repair difficulties themselves, the engineers quickly found solutions to make their cars easier to fix.
6. Reward those who cooperate.
If people are afraid to fail, they will hide problems from you and the rest of their peers. Reward people who bring problems to the surface – and reserve blame for those who don’t come together to help solve them.
My recommendation for managers in 2015 is to avoid complication in your companies. By employing Smart Simplicity, you better manage business complexity, take cost out and create competitive advantage while simultaneously engaging your teams and improving their satisfaction at work.
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