If you haven't already had the chance to listen to Yves Morieux’s talk about how to simplify complexity, now is the perfect time to do so. In his dynamic and motivational talk, Yves, the Director of BCG's Institute for Organization, discusses the concept of "smart simplicity" – a crucial approach for reimagining how we communicate and make decisions.
Here are some highlights:
- People feel so miserable and disengaged at work because today's businesses are increasingly and dizzyingly complex -- and traditional pillars of management are obsolete.
- What happens is that it is left to individual employees to navigate the rabbit's warren of interdependencies.
- When there are too many layers people are too far from the action, therefore they need KPIs, metrics, they need poor proxies for reality. They don't understand reality and they add the complicatedness of metrics.
- Create direct feedback loops that impel people to do their own work today in a way that also contributes to the satisfaction of performance requirements that matter in the future.
- Now, in front of the new complexity of business, the only solution is not drawing boxes with reporting lines. It is basically the interplay. How the parts work together. The connections, the interactions, the synapses. It is not the skeleton of boxes - it is the nervous system of adaptiveness and intelligence.
- The real battle is not against competitors. This is very abstract. Where do we meet competitors to fight them? The real battle is against ourselves, against our bureaucracy, our complicatedness.
So what can be done to overcome this traditional way of thinking about work? The following are some of the key rules Yves suggests us to follow to manage complexity without getting complicated:
- Understand what others do. What is their real work? We need to go beyond the boxes, the job descriptions, beyond the surface of the container, to understand the real content.
- Reinforce integrators. Integrators are not middle offices, they are managers, existing managers that you reinforce so that they have power and interest to make others cooperate. How can you reinforce your managers as integrators? By removing layers.
- Create direct feedback loops that impel people to do their own work today in a way that also contributes to the satisfaction of performance requirements that matter in the future.
The question is how to make these concepts actionable so that managers in any organisation can deal with day-to-day challenges?
So far, most efforts and some successes appeared to be short lived. The problem is that companies usually start doing it well, but after a while they stop because they think that change is a one-off event. It is because we think about change in terms of structure. But beyond the structure you have the normal system that needs to be continuously nurtured by cooperation.
Turning these general ideas into practical actions is challenging. Since all performance problems arise from people's actions, both systemic and individual decisions, and interactions, they form the basis for solving organisational issues, from innovation and growth to organisational culture. This kind of information needs to be visualized to be understood better in a wider, relational context.
For this to work, we need technology companies to do more than just offer specialized software for specific functions. They should provide connective technology that simplifies the complexity of interactions, makes them transparent, and supports integrative decision-making.
This highlights the need for stronger connections between airlines and technology companies. The current view of technology is focused on serving individual functions. Here, the technology company doesn’t just sell the product, the software, but service. To make the most of technology, experts on both sides need to collaborate as long as necessary to ensure this new integrated process succeeds.
It comes down to the tried and tested triangle of people, processes, and technology – one is not optimised without the other two. Without the right processes in place, the technology won’t function. When combined effectively, both lead to new way of thinking and chances to spot new opportunities.
How do these overarching concepts relate to the intricate challenges that airlines face on a daily basis, especially when they lack the support of connective techniques and tools? Let's draw inspiration from the points discussed in my article ‘Cutting Through Complexity: A Practical Guide for Connected Decision-Making’
