After years of continuous improvements, quality initiatives, product launches, marketing promotions, organization restructurings, management promotions/transfers, strategic change, and all the myriad ‘stuff’ that gets done to a business, many lose cohesion and suffer from complexity, bureaucracy, and confusion. In an article deserving a wider audience, CIO Magazine looked at addressing complexity in very large organizations. Their suggestions also apply to mid-size businesses, which often fall into the trap of using bureaucracy to cope with growth:
- Include simplicity as a theme of the organisation’s strategy.
- Simplify the organisational structure.
- Prune and simplify products and services.
- Discipline business and governance processes.
- Simplify personal patterns (meetings, comms, etc).
- Stabilise: Get the organisation under control, fix any red ink and major pain points.
- Simplify: Get your market offer tight and then organise to only do the stuff you need to make and deliver that offer.
- Develop: New or improved processes, products, markets, skills, etc. that fit your market offer. with an emphasis on simplicity.
- Grow: When they’re working, ramp them up.
- Repeat.