Minister for Simplification
I am in Rome at the moment, and as is the way on a trip I always try and understand the people, culture and history to enrich my experience. My book of choice for this trip was The Italians by John Hooper (people are the product that reveals all) and in a Chapter discussing politics and bureaucracy the book yielded the small nugget that there existed once within the administration a ‘Minister for Simplification’ attached to the words ‘…all sorts of things are immensely complicated’. Italy may have created this role to help navigate the labyrinth of legislation, but HERE was an interesting idea.
A government is a visible organisation (sometimes a highly inefficient one). Whilst it is more accountable to the People, like any business it has departments (some silo’d), platforms and processes, an audience and reputation to manage, data to protect and goals to deliver. The concept of Profit may differ - success is break even and money made is ploughed back into the system, but there is strategy to achieve - and sometimes things get complicated.
There is a difference between ‘complication’ and ‘complexity’.
Organisational complexity is multiple ‘layers’. Where layers are people, processes, tech etc. So, it follows then that organisational complication is multiple layers that are misunderstood and create inefficiencies - where inefficiencies are ‘something that happens without purpose’ eg. Two people doing the same thing, costs that are unwarranted, timings delayed with no clear explanation. Complexity does not have to be complicated and simplification is what makes the difference.
What does Simplification look like? That answer is rooted in your organisation, its culture and the expertise and tolerance of management. For the concept of simplification to truly work it needs to work at all levels - from information sharing and decision making, to the operational floor. It could be:
1. Every idea / project distilled to a single one-pager
2. Cross-organisational task forces and meetings
3. The elimination of undue process and ‘validation boards’
4. Single, shared intelligence
5. Clear KPIs - no more than necessary - that everyone can understand, follow and knows how to action.
It must be nothing done once, is done again - anywhere in the organisation. That means, not having the same meeting with the same agenda more than once, no meetings to ‘check the box’, not creating the same campaign multiple times across geographies. It means trust and empowerment. It means everyone in a team needing to pull their weight.
Want to simplify? Start (alone or with your team) by making a list of every action done twice, what you misunderstand and what is felt unneccessary. This is the easy part. Next comes the prioritisation and transformation. Simplification may start as an exercise, however you don’t need a designated Simplification Minister to practise it.
All views my own.
Thumbnail image by Julia Hanke for Firearm Studio.
