"Look, our company’s too complicated."
These were almost the first words out of Steve Jobs mouth when he returned to Apple (AAPL) after being ousted from the company.
I've been hitting on this a lot lately because many business leaders and managers tend to make things complicated, thinking it somehow covers every eventuality.
That's where a lot of complicatedness comes from: trying to anticipate too many things that are impossible to see. Another is trying to meed every possible need by a consumer or business out there. It's impossible to do. That's what Jobs found in coming back to Apple.
In response he took a simple step ... drawing a grid he said this: "‘We’re going to do just four things," and he wrote in the grid - laptop, desktop, consumer, business.
That simple step took the confusion, unsurety and complexity out of the situation and brought workers back to something simple and easy to understand and focus on.
It reminds of Dell recently when they had so many different computers and options that there weren't able to service what they sold. The result was dissatisfied customers and burned out employees.
There was so much knowledge to learn, that customers had to be switched back and forth between customer service people because each one only had so much they knew. Most of us know the disaster that became.
What all business leaders need to do is look at the simple statement Jobs made above, and ask ourselves if the company is too complicated. If the answer is yes, then we need to narrow things down to our core competence again and focus on doing that right.
How can we identify if things are too complicated? Measure it by the ability of our workers to service our constomers. Assuming we train them properly, if they aren't able to handle the load, we could have far too many options and knowledge needed to properly take care of them.
If we can't service something, to me we shouldn't be offering it up to our customers. If it's that complicated, we'll get customer overload and pressure on our customer service reps that can't be humanly met. The answer is simplicity.
Other Steve Jobs Resources:
You've got to find what you love
Steve Jobs, Business Personality
Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation
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