Building Blocks, Close Up! Sales Enablement Focus: The Threat of Oversimplification

Hello Enablers! Happy Friday!

Yes, you read that title right.?

I’m worried about some of the trends I’m seeing in our world of

sales enablement.?

Simple is good.?

Oversimplified

is not.

As you can already see, this edition of Building Blocks, Close Up! is about the insidious threat of oversimplification!

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you may remember that I define performance levers as the knowledge, competencies, skills, behaviors, and conditions that must exist, for ethical, sustained, high performance to occur.

The work required to improve organizational performance (in a sustained, ethical way) is complex.?To radically improve performance and shift toward high performance as an organization, that’s even more true.?Doing this for the sales function – transforming sales results in today’s complex buying and selling environment – is particularly multifaceted and complicated.

The Sales Performance Ecosystem

Here’s something else you may have seen me writing about… the Sales Performance Ecosystem.?We could debate the bucket names, where things sit, and possibly whether I’ve missed including something, but there’s little doubt that these elements (some of which are departmental or organizational levers) all influence sales performance.?Aligning them or getting them “firing on all cylinders” can greatly improve sales results.

Not exactly “simple,” is it?

How about The Building Blocks, with its framework, systems, and models?

Head spinning? I hope not, but I would understand it.

Want Some Straight Talk?

Here's the bottom-line. If you want to do more than run some cool initiatives, and you have a burning desire to make an impact in an ecosystem with organizational dynamics, a fluctuating market with economic factors, complex organizational and human behaviors, political considerations, an entrenched culture, and perhaps a less-than-optimal way of doing things today - you will need to be able to navigate the complex to move the needle - and to make it appear simpler for others, who won't have your tolerance or capacity for understanding it all.

• SIDEBAR: My best hope for each of you is that you'll have a boss someday (or now) who gets all of this stuff and is a true partner in figuring out how the gears turn and how to build a V-12 combustion engine (maybe that runs on hydrogen) and blows the doors off the competition and any past internal performance. But most of your bosses are just going to want to drive the car. They'll want it to be an automatic with comfortable seats, intermittent wipers, and a really nice sound system. #IfYouKnowYouKnow

When Simple is Good

Please don’t misunderstand me.?I’m not lobbying for unnecessary complexity.?Simple is good (or even great) and unnecessary complexity should be systematically stamped out or avoided.?I was in the audience at the 2013 Forrester Sales Enablement Forum when Scott Santucci recommended we all become “simpletists” (but not simpletons) and I agreed with him, in the same way that I agree with the quote often attributed to Einstein…

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Simple is often a wonderful goal.?It’s great when you are:

• Delivering service
• Navigating a website
• Using a product or service
• Ordering something online
• Explaining a product or service
• Crafting or improving a process (Lean rocks)
• Searching for an answer or using a Help system
• Providing clear instruction
• Explaining a value proposition
• Using a sales enablement tool
• Crafting sales messaging
• Teaching a concept
• And more…

When Simple Worries Me

When you’re analyzing to develop performance interventions, such as trying to diagnose training needs (and the root cause behind them), align levers to radically improve sales performance, or lead or manage change in your company… I worry about oversimplification.?I often ask myself, are we:

• Afraid to think our way through complicated issues and factors?
• Shying away from the hard or complex work?
• Settling to get something done (activity) rather than get a great result (outcome)?
• Dumbing-down our approach, too far?

Sometimes, I believe we are.

An example…

An Oversimplified Example of Oversimplification

Is surveying a sales force about what they “need,” really a “training needs analysis?”

The answer may vary greatly, depending on what you mean by “surveying” and how you did it.?I’ll have to oversimplify this, myself, for a newsletter edition, but here’s my best effort, to make my point.

• If you’re just asking what training your sales force needs, this is a very weak and oversimplified approach.?You might see patterns; you might not, and in either case, you won’t always know whether closing those gaps will improve performance.?These are "wants." In some cases, you might just be seeing an indication that previously-delivered training wasn’t transferred or reinforced.?This is “going through the motions” and will likely lead to random acts of enablement.
• Are you asking about specific knowledge, competencies, skills, behaviors, and conditions that – based on your initial analysis – you’ve hypothesized must exist, for ethical, sustained, high performance to occur??This starts to move in the right direction but may still be still too simple.
• Are you verifying the Importance of your hypothesized levers to achieving results, asking how Difficult those behaviors are to perform, how Frequently the behaviors are used, and perhaps how often they should used??Again, positive movement.

But if you do the above, and:

• Don’t know whether you are asking these questions of top performers, average performers, or poor performers - you can’t segment your analysis.
• Aren’t looking at the differences in responses across those bands - you won't be able to prioritize actions.
• Or aren’t later asking about or otherwise assessing Comfort levels or Ability to use?the skills (to the level required for high performance)…

?…you’ve missed a real opportunity to gather data which can point to:

• The differentiating practices of top performers.
• Where the gaps exist in your sales organization.
• How to close those gaps and deliver results.

Want even “less simple?” Consider that:

• You can collect the sales managers’ analysis of the same factors, for each of their reps, for comparison to the rep’s self-rating.
• You can capture some of this data in ways better than surveying (or as a follow-up to surveying, which is a great starting point for analysis), such as interviews, focus groups, and DITLO (Day In The Life Of) field observation.
• You can do statistical analysis on the data gathered (especially multivariate regression analysis), to look for correlations, points of differentiation, or even predictive validity (if they do this, to this level, this frequently, they are X% more likely to get Y results).
• If you’re looking for the root cause of lower performance, you may find that training is not the best solution to the problem, at all, as suggested by Mager and Pipe in their classic?Performance Analysis Flowchart or our adaptation of Ferdinand F. Fournies work with this Solution Chart from Sales Coaching Excellence.

What’s My Point, Again?

I’ll stop here because I'm drifting a bit. Those are good examples, but the point of this post isn’t about needs analysis, performance gap analysis, or selecting the best interventions or solutions.

The point is that any of those critical tasks can be oversimplified to the point of ineffectiveness, where the outcomes are only a partial or pseudo solution, or maybe even a completely inaccurate indication of what is really needed.

Doing the “simplified” method may:

• Fulfill an obligation
• Keep you busy
• Be easier, faster, less resource-constrained, and generally less painful
• Have you delivering training that people (say they) want
• Be better understood buy those who are busy or less detail-oriented
• Get good?reactions or satisfaction survey results….

…but if you get a performance lift, it will be as much due to luck (or other unconsidered factors) as to the work you did.?

Simple, But No Simpler

In the end, I am a fan of simplifying as much as possible, avoiding unnecessary complication, but not oversimplifying.?I think this is especially true when your work involves the analysis of performance issues and the identification of performance solutions.?Perhaps the phrases “simplifying, unnecessary complication" and "oversimplifying” are so open to interpretation that it’s mostly a semantics debate and better lends to a dialogue versus a newsletter, but I’ll look forward to seeing how my points resonate, or don’t.

Interestingly, at the time when I originally published some of these thoughts on my blog, my respected colleague,?Don Clark, published a post on “Simplicity Combats Complexity,” and as usual, it’s excellent.?You can read it at: https://bdld.blogspot.com/2014/03/simplicity-combats-complexity.html.

Consistent with my above semantics comment, you may or may not find Don’s recommendations for combating complexity to be “simple,” because that’s very contextual.?But they are logical and proven methods, offering proof that you can simplify intelligently. Just be mindful to not oversimplify to the point of not getting a performance lift.

In summary, be cautious about oversimplifying your approaches to sales performance improvement. Strive to do what is necessary, to truly produce results. And in the real-world, that is often far from simple, and certainly not easy.?Take the arrows, as they say, or bite the bullet, and be the one that:

• Wades through the complexity to get to root causes
• Builds solutions that will work
• Makes it seem simple to others...

...and above all - strive to #MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!

Here are a few resources to poke into, as you have time:

• Article: Oversimplification and Exaggeration Fallacies
• Article: How to Use Occam’s Razor Without Getting Cut
• Reference: Fallacy of the Single Cause
• Journal: Don’t Be Addicted: The Oft-Overlooked Dangers of Simplification
• Video: Oversimplification: One of the Most Common Barriers to Critical Thinking

And Now, A Word from Our Sponsor...

Felix Krueger says:

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SPECIAL NOTE:

This will be the last newsletter in 2022.

We will be skipping 12/23 and 12/30, and will resume our weekly pace on

Friday, January 6, 2023.

Whatever you may celebrate, we wish you the very happiest of holiday seasons!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Peaceful Solstice, Happy Holidays, and a partridge in a pear tree!

_____________________

That's it for this week! Did you learn something new reading this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time - bonus points if you snorted), share it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribe right here on LinkedIn, and check out The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience. Felix and I are both Building Blocks Mentors for the weekly group coaching sessions, and we hope to see you there!?

Until next time, stay the course, and?#MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!