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Change Leadership Needs to Drive Simplicity (HBR says, “Desperately!”)

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My research on the factors that distinguish successful from unsuccessful change initiatives has influence my writing, speaking and consulting for the last ten years.  More and more, the business world is coming ‘round to the understanding that there is a weakness in 100 years of “management science,” and a fatal flaw in the logic that prevails in strategy and consulting war rooms these days.  The reality is that: 

Attempting to meet complexity with complexity is a losing gambit!”

A recent article at HBR.org by strategist Chris Zook, in which he reflects on his experience at the Davos World Economic Forum, sounds a clear and ominous agreement: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/02/desperately_seeking_simplicity.html

 “One theme seemed omnipresent — that while events are unfolding in the world at an accelerating pace, increasingly complex institutions are less and less able to deal with them.”

“Today, complexity has become the silent killer of profitable growth in business, and sometimes of CEO careers.”

Zook observed that worldwide authorities on subjects that span U.S. competitiveness, organization strategy, and even Emotional Intelligence pointed to how the lure of complex organizations and complex solutions for facing the pace of change and globalization is a recipe for failure.  In citing his own, more recent, research, he states that, “We just completed a multi-year study of the root causes of enduring success. We found an increasing premium to simplicity in the world of today — not just simplicity of organization, but more fundamentally to an essential simplicity at the heart of strategy itself.”

As this planning season is launched by your company, or as you launch new 2012 initiatives, ask yourself the following:

• How can we simplify this offering and effort from the perspective of our BEST customers or best and brightest employees?

• There are several steps or facets of this solution that we’ve discussed for the sake of assuring ourselves that our solution is complete…which ones can we CUT OUT because we’ve hit a point of diminishing returns on (not completeness, but) outcomes?

• If we cannot easily replicate this action in different markets or by different teams, it is too complex…What can we TAKE OUT of the process to make it more repeatable?

• Where do we find ourselves bogged down in details?...are the details HELPING?

• Are the risks we perceive to being less complete or less smart not just possible risks, but highly PROBABLE risks?...If not, what simple things can we adopt to address a big chunk of the remaining risk?

This guidance applies to leading change and defining organization strategy.

To learn more about how effective Change Leaders drive focus, see our 3-part series on “Fighting the New Normal” http://www.lastwordonchange.com/blog/bid/71542/Leading-Change-Fighting-the-New-Normal-Contagion-Part-I