From Simplistic to Simple in a Few (not so easy) Steps

I wrote recently about The Problem With Complicated. We tend to overcomplicate things, even though we yearn for simplicity. So, how do we get there?

 

Dan Ward, a US military officer, blogger, and speaker on project leadership, has developed an elegant model that describes the decision points on the path to simplicity.

 

 

‘Complexity’ means a ‘large quantity of interconnected or associated parts’. ‘Goodness’, in our context, means the impact of our leadership development efforts on organisational objectives.

 

We start at ‘simplistic’. Low complexity, low goodness. For leadership development, this might be a simple one-day workshop. Not too complicated to design, but not a lot of lasting impact either. It’s kind of boring here, and we want to move on to something more sexy.

 

So we move to the ‘region of the complex’ – higher complexity, higher goodness. We might offer a leadership programme that integrates an assessment, some workshops, coaching, online modules and some action learning. It’s more effort to design and implement. For the learner there’s more thinking required to ‘get’ it. The payoff is greater impact.

 

Moving here involves creativity, learning and adding new ideas into the mix. It’s fun, exciting and invigorating. 

 

From here, we can go one of two ways:

 

The path of least resistance is towards the ‘region of the complicated’. We take this path when we assume that more complexity will result in more goodness.

 

Unfortunately, we’ve already passed this point. Adding in more complexity now only results in something that’s difficult to ‘get’ and use.

 

Here, you have multiple offerings (courses, assessment tools, coaching, secondments etc) that don’t align with or support each other. It’s a bunch of disconnected products, rather than an integrated solution.

 

Here, it’s high effort, low impact. ‘busyness’ abounds.

 

We end up here as a result of lazy thinking. For instance, we might say ‘Oh but this business unit needs something different for this particular niche audience.’ Really? Is it that special? 

 

You don’t want to be here. So what’s the other option?

 

The wiser path is to the ‘region of the simple’. This is where we end up with something that has significant impact (‘goodness’) but is simple in its design and use.

 

In leadership development, it looks like a an integrated programme with a few key elements that all interact and reinforce each other. This might mean a focus on only a few critical competencies, with a few clever learning methods designed to maximise engagement and impact. Nothing complicated. People just ‘get it’ and want more.

 

It’s by designing and implementing simple (but not simplisitic) leadership programmes that you can really add value to the organisation.

 

Next time, we’ll have a look at practical tips to get to simple. Subscribe for free to get notified of new posts.

 

 

Digby Scott is a Director of Inspire Group, and is based in Wellington. You can keep in touch: