Are you so afraid of being seen to be simplistic (including by yourself) that you do not dare to be simple? FILE PHOTO | NMG
As a non-technical chief executive of IT companies over many
years, I was conscious that one of my key roles was to understand what
benefits our clients were seeking from investing in technology systems
and to match these with what was being proposed by our technical staff.
I
was an interpreter and a mediator, bringing together supply and demand
to the satisfaction of both parties. The challenge was to absorb the
essence of the need and the response so as to help align the two.
I
had to rise above all the jargon used by the techies on each side, and
engage with the clients’ leadership in language to which they could
relate. Vital to this was conveying what was intended in a simple and
straightforward way.
In my current life as a management
consultant this business of ‘Keep it Simple, Stupid’ (KISS) continues
to serve me well — I believe it helps me with my columns too.
But
it is not without its challenges, as so many of the organisations with
which my colleagues and I interact seem to revel in over-complicating
much of what they do.
What we have found is that the
more educated and sophisticated the senior leadership, the more they
expect that we will engage them with impressively complex models and
frameworks and methodologies with theories of change and
multi-dimensional matrices, overelaborate manifestations of the balanced
scorecard and very clever assessment as well as incentive schemes.
So
when we offer them the simple approaches to strategy development,
culture change, performance management and such like that we have
evolved over the years, a good number are unimpressed.
And the reason is that they mistake the simple for the
simplistic, imagining our uncomplicated approach, our absence of
management-speak, to be beneath their intellectual dignity to apply.
They are also skeptical that our simple approach is sufficiently robust
to be effective.
Many large international
organisations, not least development partners and NGOs but also
corporates, have teams of head-office boffins — no doubt supported by
consultants paid multiples of what I and my team command — who roll out
intricate strategies and plans, systems and processes, that boggle the
mind and often do more to distract from delivering on their
organisations’ visions and goals than to support their achievement.
Never
mind that before people have fully understood the ramifications of what
has been handed down to them the whole thing has more than likely been
replaced by yet another intricate masterpiece.
It was
Winston Churchill who once apologised for giving a long speech,
explaining that he hadn’t had enough time to write a short one. Well,
similarly I believe those who roll out complicated ways of doing things
haven’t spent sufficient time making them less so.
And
while what we do may look simple and indeed be simple, it takes intense
preparation and deep concentration to focus on purpose and deliver
impact: we are actually like the proverbial swan, gliding smoothly along
the surface yet paddling like mad underneath.
Disparagingly,
it is said that consultants and coaches are merely people who “borrow
your watch to tell you the time”. To me, however, there can be much
goodness in that. For our job is to bring out the wisdom in the group or
the individual, not to preach from on high.
The less
we do the better, and the more we can help our clients to read what
their watch is telling them without us the better. To succeed we must
therefore be excellent listeners, and skilled at continuously assessing
at what speed and in what direction to guide the process.
In
many of our workshops, coaching sessions and other initiatives we
smilingly give those involved “permission” to be simple. Sometimes we
are forced to instruct them to be so!
And it is very
gratifying that once we have completed an assignment it is not unusual
for one or more of them – including earlier skeptics – to tell us how
much they appreciated the way we progressed their issues in impactful
yet uncomplicated ways.
Let me conclude by asking: are
you so afraid of being seen to be simplistic (including by yourself)
that you do not dare to be simple?
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