Complexity – Do You Love It?

Is complexity an artifact of incomplete thinking or something we benefit from? 

At some level, we all like to keep things simple.  But at the same time we continually drive our businesses and our lives to ever increasing complexity. You need to simplify your communications, simplify your product lines, and simplify your processes in order to get the best possible results from your project investments.

Communications Complexity

In corporate communications, Proctor & Gamble norms say that any memo of importance has to be no longer than one page. A part of their folklore has it that one CEO bravely went to a page and a half when announcing the reorganization of their brand and corporate structures.

In selling, the sixty-second elevator speech is king. If you can’t explain what you do, how you add value, and why your solution is better in sixty-seconds, you will miss opportunities… and may be viewed as confused.

The larger the business, the more work it is to align everyone with the mission, direction, goals, strategy, and tactics that are the lifeblood of performance. That alignment requires simple and powerful messages.

Product Lines Complexity

A test of clarity of product lines is the ability of a sales rep to listen to a customer for a minute or two and then in that same amount of time explain which product is right for them. A sign of unclear product positioning is when the rep tells their customer about all of the product options and asks them to choose one.

Competing product lines greatly increase overhead in support and logistics as well as cause customer confusion. They also confuse the project portfolio process as new-versus -old product funding decisions have to be made.  Worse yet, it often drives a company to run more simultaneous programs than they can effectively afford or support.

Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinal ask an important question in their recent Harvard Business Review article: “How would your business be different if you only had one product line? What is the price you pay for the complexity you currently support?”

Process Complexity

The price paid for an overly complex project process is that the process is not followed. I’ve seen many businesses with 100+ page processes fully developed but gathering dust because their organization wouldn’t or couldn’t take the time to learn and use them. Too often, funding is allocated to write and pilot a process but when it comes to the change management process required to implement the process, the money and interest fade. Too often, the true cost of an overly complex process is to live with the team’s old process cloaked with only the vestiges of a new process.

Process investment can be optimized. A basic optimization curve looks like Figure 1. Unfortunately, the only way to find out where you are on the curve is to be off the optimum point. To the left of the peak is inefficiency from too little standardization, to the right is a process that is overburdened by bureaucratic complexity. I advise businesses to err to the left of the peak. Erring to the right of the peak increases the cost of every project and every process.

Organizational Complexity

When I interview clients, I like to ask them about their jobs and also about the responsibilities of the people that they work with. Frequently those job responsibilities are not clear.

But then add a large organization to the mix. Large organizations cause people’s jobs to be more narrowly defined. Unfortunately that narrower definition is often less clear and leaves gaps between peoples' responsibilities.

The one-page organizational descriptions and the one-page job descriptions are needed to clarify purpose and role. Yes, it is more work to write it short, but if you don’t, the people who need to understand it the most are the least likely to read through the pages of descriptions – just as people hardly ever read to the end of a long email.

The more cross-functional teams, standing teams, reporting organizations, businesses, product lines, workgroups, peer groups, process teams, and so on that you have, the more you need to have a simple ‘organizational design spec’ that is totally understandable. One page. Sixty seconds.

Summary

Yes, complexity can work and sometimes ‘rocket science’ is required. But unless there is an easily understandable master design, an organization that places a high priority on clearly training everyone on those processes, an organization that has the will to follow through so that everyone who needs to understand does understand, all of the complexity is most often a distraction from the real work.

Too often I see a complex process built when the root issue is that people don’t talk, don’t agree, don’t want to work together, are allowed to not cooperate, or don’t believe in their work. All of the project processes in the world won’t solve those teamwork problems. A complex process just allows more excuses for poor teamwork and lack of progress.

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