KISS the MICE!

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is a very good methodology to make things easier to understand and implement. It also in general gives more space for new ideas and innovations. It helps to let a team grow into a self-steering unit which will improve itself by applying KISS to their own ideas.

Now as a manager or team leader this might frighten you, thinking your own job is on the line. A self-steering team might hardly need you, so getting MICE (Make It Complex and Elaborate) rules in your team is a fine way of proving your necessity to the company. the MICE rules below are just to show that you can actually make already complex procedures and working environments more challenging for team members. Use them if KISS sounds like a bad idea and paranoia is real.

1. No team interaction (or as little as possible)

Make sure any regular periodic team communication (stand-ups or similar status meetings for example) are kept to a bare minimum or even better, are non-existent. Piling on the work without checking the resources available in your team might already do the trick, but if they keep asking for team meetings, search for excuses, like meeting rooms not being available or stating that such meetings are a waste of time, since one could spend that time doing actual work.

2. Use a waste bin for any bright ideas

Stimulate people to give any ideas they have to improve procedures, processes or tools directly to you (a closed ideas box is the most simple implementation), then drop them in the waste bin. Unless of course they actually hinder more than help (requiring extra approval for simple requests like a pencil for example). Implement those as soon as possible and stress the importance of working in a new way.

Bonus Trick: After implementation of a bad idea never tell the team clearly how it should be done and let them figure it out for themselves.

3. Find and use the most complex system you can find for anything

If you have any outdated, overly complex systems (preferably more than one) than use those exclusively as tools for all procedures and data entry. Try to keep them on as long as possible because new systems have a lot of unknown properties and might even be more efficient.

Bonus trick: always get the cheapest system if replacement is inevitable and can no longer be rescheduled. This is very unlikely to be the best system to get the work done, so you save money while seeing the team take the hit.

4. Tool and Data entry doubling, tripling or more..

Make sure data entries have to be done in at least 2 different systems with different interfaces and different ways of getting the data in (See 3 for what systems are preferable). More is better and don't let them get interconnected with automated data connections!

Bonus trick: Get at least one system where copy&paste doesn't work properly so the team members have to copy the data over by hand.

The Mice Score

After implementing these rules a MICE score can be derived. The MICE score is defined as: If viable output created by the team is lower after implementing the MICE rule; the MICE score is higher by an arbitrary amount. Maximum score is no viable output created by the team. Something you might strive for, but probably will never achieve.

There are very likely many, many more MICE you have experienced yourself (mention those in the comments). These are the ones I've experienced firsthand but I know there are more.

This article is written in the spirit of humour and reflection, and detecting and discussing MICE is a great and fun way of finding impediments in your team. However upping your MICE score creates bad products and unhappy people. I sincerely hope getting rid of the MICE is what is strived for. So if you spot one and you do want an efficient team which produces output that is useful to the company use KISS on the MICE rules to achieve a highly functional viable product from your team.