Welch's 21 Steps to Management Greatness - 4
"Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making."
Here we have one of the greatest managers and business leaders of all time confirming again the extraordinary value of keeping things simple.
I like how Welch makes it specific in a "simple" way in his comment.
Of course every benefit he relates simplicity to is in connection to speed; something he saw would be essential years ago.
Speed isn't important for the sake of speed alone, rather its important to make sure the organization moves in synch together. For example, if a message is communicated to half of a business, they would start to act on it, while the other half hasn't even received the message to be able to take the needed steps. This would disjoint a business. Simplicity in the message ensures that it will be passed on quickly and efficiently.
In the case of designs he says the same thing. Simplicity gets you to the market quicker, and once people try out your product, they can always give feedback to what they want added to make it more relevant to their needs. Those that try to put out something perfect and complex will be destroyed in a marketplace that needs simple but efficient answers now.
This is one of the reasons Welch worked so hard to flatten General Electric (GE), to make it a company that could communicate almost instantaneously across the large, international company. There were obviously technology related tools included in that mix also.
Assuming a viable purpose and vision is in place, those that are able to communicate the most efficiently in a business will be market leaders in what they do. The key to that type of communications is making a business as simple as can be done. It needs to be one of the core values of a company.
Other Jack Welch Resources:
Jack Welch's advice to MIT Sloan students
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