Resisting Complexity

As a company gets more mature and grows in size, adding people to support the purpose and mission of the business, it also needs to define internal processes and "SOP's" (standard operating procedures) to reasonably manage with clarity the volume of work; to deliver to clients the work that supports the "why" of the business at more scale .

However, these SOP's can also become an encumbrance because often times we end up working more and more to serve the internal functions of the business rather than the clients. This is a subtle, gradual, descent, and easy to miss.

To resist, to remain effective, takes consistent resistance by someone, or by a group of "someone's" to keep asking this question, in perpetuity, "How can we simplify, resist the complex, streamline, and keep "the main thing the main thing" like we did when the business began, which is to focus on simplifying client's lives and delivering creative solutions to them?"

Do you want to know one way to measure if you're being too "internally focused?" First, look at your calendar. How many internal meetings are required each week versus how much time to produce the work and connect in a collaborative manner with the client? This is certainly applicable to those with client relationship management (CRM) responsibilities in any measure. But everyone, every role, impacts the client, whether a CRM, accounts payable representative, receptionist, engineer, proposal writer, scheduler, principal, project manager, designer, or other.

It's all about the client, the customer. It's all about the delivering the service or product as scoped, and in a manner that makes their experience reasonably positive, and one of relative ease.

We can lose sight of this if we don't create and maintain awareness and constructive tension in the system.

It's the responsibility of all of us to remind ourselves and our colleagues to "keep it simple." And it starts at the top, with the leader of the business.

Build the systems, deliver to the SOP's, but only if they are supporting the purpose driven mission of the business to the benefit of the client. Cut out everything else.