Simplifying your business: how to get started
- Mark Johnson
- Aug 23, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: 7d
All businesses need to get things done. Failing that, there’s no delivery of products, services, or help (if you’re a non-profit). And if your organisation can do this with less steps or less effort, it has an edge, a real competitive advantage.
That's one major reason why simplifying a business’ organization, processes, products, or management practices is important. But how do you get your business to think simpler, especially if you’re not the CEO?
1. Showcase the problem
A. Fill in our complexity finder questionnaire with your team. It takes only a few minutes and it’ll help you all to see where the complexities lie.
B. List your business’s pain points and ask yourself if complexity is to blame. For example, projet delays are often linked to excessive processes.
C. Bring the user / customer's perspective into the business as a way of highlighting complexities created by too much internal focus. Invite customers to a team meeting, take your team out to meet users and so on.
2. Build a business case for simplicity
This is easier than it sounds. Let’s say that in this first step above, you uncover that you spend too much time in meetings.
Now multiply the number of participants in said meetings x an average hourly rate x the number of yearly occurrences of the meeting. The result will quickly be in CHF millions as Shopify recently uncovered thanks to its meeting cost calculator. That’s savings waiting to be realized and your business case made.
3. Showcase what simplicity can deliver
Apple, Easyjet, McDonald’s, Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox, Netflix are all built on simplicity. It’s in their DNA, they know its value and keep asking how they can create products and services that are easier to use, understand and buy.
Merck “Simplify and Act with Urgency”, Deloitte “The Simplification Principle”, and of course GE's Jack Welsh's “Simplify or Ossify” are examples of businesses that focus on simplicity. We have the full stories if you're interested.
Give it a try. You might just become the hero who introduces simplification to your business.
