Thinking Clean

 “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Steve Jobs

In an increasingly complicated world, the default to complexity can seem like the intelligent thing to do. Look at all these fancy moving parts. I am so clever that I got all of these things connected. But is more, better?

Some of the Transformers in the movie…Transformers, have over 10,000 moving parts but convey infinitely less emotion than one of Wall-e’s eye tilts.

More doesn’t mean better. Adding simplicity is the challenge you want to strive for. What is the least you can do to make this work?

This doesn’t mean that the whole system isn’t large with many moving parts. The challenge in an organisation or as an individual is to be very clear on what every moving part does.

A film set it chaotic. There is constant movement, either the set is alive, or the actors are alive. Each department is doing their singular task so that the whole work is better and the great crew do this magic unnoticed. All you see is the pretty images on the screen, you don’t see the poor grip in three feet of mud and shit.

The systems in your organisation need to be clear about:

• what the process does?
• why does it do it?
• who does what and when?
• and how do they work?

This big crazy colourful system can interact and interconnect but only as much as is needed.

Double handing work, or redoing work is a waste of resources and also annoys the shit out of your staff. Within your systems, be clear of what is doing what, and make it as simple as required, no more.

Create customer journeys for each piece. What does the organisation need? What does the staff need? What do the stakeholders need? There will be many different factors and parties.

Do they all need to know all the information? What is important, relevant, and urgent? If you are the boss you will care about the money, how it’s coming in, where is it going? But, your staff don’t care about that, so the billing side should be as easy as possible for them. The production of the work to get that money should be squarely on your staff.

Being super clear is it about what you are doing is difficult, but valuable. Break sections of the work into smaller manageable pieces will allow you to better understand how each part works and fits together. The more you can hone your thinking to the specific challenge the greater your return on thought investment will be.

Which will in turn increase your real return on investment.

Go make your people awesome.

Luke