Keeping it simple...

This year we incorporated a new value into our corporate culture called “Keep it simple”, and it got me thinking at the airport lounge before a long flight home to what it meant to me. 

Once I got thinking about it, I went through my calendar, looking at the week ahead, I wanted to know if I was putting this critical core value into practice.

I figured starting with my meetings, explicitly paying attention to what the team had anticipated in accomplishing in them. Was it apparent to those attending in advance?

One coffee down in the lounge and now I start thinking about the impact of this value, not only with direct reports but with extended teams, partners, even with friends and loved ones.

It seems pretty self-explanatory, but when you think about it, a lot of the most simple presentations, leadership styles and even sales pitches on the surface seem to exude the concept of simplicity. 

Simplicity, contrary to conventional thought, requires a fair amount of foresight and strategic vision. Reducing things to a purer state requires chipping away at the noise and genuinely understanding the intention and consequences behind whatever task you are setting out to lead, drive, achieve or communicate. 

The bulk of the time is spent in preparation rather than execution, great presenters look very relaxed, and their messages are much better received by employees when the communication is simple and clear.  To get to that point, it requires much work honing messaging and delivery styles behind the scenes. I have known leaders who take a week off before a big keynote or spend an hour prepping prior on stage, making sure they have their message clarified and ready to go because of the impact they know they will have on a large group of people.

In contrast, less preparation, less thought undoubtedly leads to less productive, and as that cascades down to management and individual contributors, it leads to less focus. Less focus leads to reduced performance and hence a cycle forms.

A few areas to focus on when trying to keep things simple in my mind or at least the goal for me over the next few weeks:

Simple words lead to more effective communication:

Sounding smart might make someone feel good about themselves or impress a few folks, but it does very little for driving clarity and understanding with people. We work in complex environments over many time zones, cultures and languages, and it is critical to be very clear on your message. Think about the same sentence or key message resonating in China at the same time perceived similarly in ANZ.

Using words that everyone understands and explaining concepts clearly will lead to people feeling more aligned with messaging they can understand quickly. This also has an added benefit of the team getting behind actions a lot faster. Even reducing the risk of misinterpretation and lost cycles of effort focused on an offshoot initiative.

Reinforce with repetition:

Building a message, success metric or strategy that can be reinforced over time means two things. Firstly you believe in the idea/concept as a long-standing message you can get behind. This usually means you have spent some time thinking about it as it will become a brand, so it will need to be relevant for the audience. 

Obviously, you will tweak as things come up, but overall, it will be reasonably consistent.

Consistency is the second component; repetition of messaging increases the likelihood of retention. If you measure three key metrics consistently every week, managers will soon cascade inspection down to the teams, and over time, this will be embedded daily work. 

When work becomes simple, teams can get focused more productive or reduce distractions in day to day activity.

One thing I try and focus on is during regular business update meetings is keeping things structured and the flow simple so that leaders can join knowing what to expect and can focus on only delivering content to move the business forward.

Evaluate and test the effectiveness of your messaging constantly:

At almost every discussion with all levels of employees, it’s essential to check in to see what they perceive to be the most critical areas of focus. Interpretation is always subjective, while you think your message is clear if you don’t spend time evaluating its stickiness, you may find that the teams that receive them have understood things differently.

When teams themselves use language aligned to your focus areas as part of their daily work or during their communications with each other, you know the messaging is clear.

I always get a kick out of unprompted business updates from individual contributors in the same format we talk about at the management level. This means the message has transferred from one layer to the next and due to its simplicity adopted and universal across the organisation.

Boarding call in 5 mins.. so it's time to go - will keep you posted on how the next few weeks go. More to come.