This time of year always gives way to resolutions and thoughts about what will be different when we wake up on January 1st. But commitments to making lasting changes in diet and fitness can be short-lived. So why not tackle something at work that is under your control and makes a difference? Make January a “simplification month.”
I first came across the idea in 2013 when I interviewed Jess Lee, the former CEO of e-commerce site Polyvore, who joined Sequoia Capital as a partner in 2016. This is how she described it: “We just asked everyone of the company to make a list of everything they do, identify the important things and, for the rest of the list, simplify it, optimize it or delete it, so that we can get the company to be in the simplest possible state.
The company removed a lot of features on its platform, removed some ad products, and simplified its communication processes. Yes, it required a break from the high-speed mindset that startups need. But it was worth it. “The whole company worked on it for a month and it’s been a while since we were building new things,” he said. “But it’s very, very important to take the time to clean up all the entropy that would otherwise happen.”
A month of simplification is a smart approach to focus everyone’s attention on one of the biggest challenges for companies of any size: complexity. In business, as in nature, complexity inevitably affects any ecosystem. Initiatives are introduced and people lose interest when they are no longer the shiny new toys. Growth brings more involvement from new departments, who want to put their fingerprints on every aspect of the business. Departments and business units are pushing for resources to build their empires. And strategy decks get longer and busier, adding bullet points, level pyramids, and corkscrew arrows to describe where the company is going. Businesses can make things more complex by default.
If you want to commit to making January your simplification month, here are two ways to get started.
First, take a look at everything you’ve started this past year and be ruthless about what you should keep doing and what you should stop doing.
Bob Pittman, the CEO of iHeartMedia, told me that he uses the “weed the garden” shorthand for this exercise. “If I try 10 new things and say, for example, two are clear winners and two are clear winners,” he explained, “that means I have six in between. What do I do with these? Most organizations, and when I don’t care, including [ours] – Let everything live except the clear losers. And what happens over time is that things in between don’t really help you. It takes up a lot of resources. It’s confusing. It’s muddy. “
He added: “If you let these things pile up – and with the next 10 things you do, there are two clear winners and six that are gunk – soon my whole organization will be basically mediocrity and gunk. So if you can tell I will only let the clear winners live.I will take the resources I put in for the other eight things and try again, “you can keep a clean organization. Part of it is being honest with yourself. What is really a winner? “
The next step: As you plan for next year, change your focus to results instead of priorities.
A common problem I see in my consulting work with leadership teams is that their priority lists are often too long. Yes, leaders may want to indicate that they have their arms around the business and that they are fully aware of all the areas they need to work on. But it can be difficult to move the needle over anything if you have more than three or four key areas of focus. As Jim Collins wrote, “If you have more than three priorities, you have none.”
Priority lists are often too long. It can be difficult to move the needle over anything if you have more than three or four key areas of focus.
Another problem is the meaning of the word priority it can be diffuse. Priorities can often be unnecessarily high: pursuing excellence, achieving “best-in-class” status in a given area, or creating an environment of inclusion and thus escaping the rigors of deadlines and deadlines. movement-free metrics to measure progress.
John Donahoe, who in October was named Nike’s next CEO (his fourth CEO role, after ServiceNow, eBay and Bain & Company), prefers to focus on the year’s results and uses priorities for describing the work needed to achieve these results. Donahoe applies the exercise to himself as a company leader and to his direct reports. He begins by saying, “These are the results I want to be able to say yes to at the end of the year.”
“We say that if we achieve these desired results as a company, we will be successful and say we had a good year,” he explained to me in a recent interview. “It’s not just about financial results; it is about achieving these desired results and we will list the priorities to achieve the desired results. By listing these results, it becomes really clear how interdependent they are and how everyone’s priorities should be cascaded. ”
So, as you look forward to next year, try to answer this simple question: what are the three or four things you need to achieve over the next twelve months so that, at this time next year, can you look back and say that 2021 was a successful year? You can then start planning your next simplification month in January 2021 right now.