Go Back To Go Forward

Tis the seaon when most business examines itself to one degree or another and sets course for the new year.  Some do this simply and effectively, some resemble a intervention and some will produce plans and paper enough to fill a dumptruck or a hard drive. Before you undertake a year end review and business planning for the New Year take an inventory of your own emotions and results. Look to your own experience, trust your people and most of all keep it simple. Here are a few tips, stories and ideas that can keep you from making common mistakes.

Ask yourself what is the current state of the business. If you are still in business chances are it isnt a total wreck. Dont be overly negative, or overly positive. Be honest with yourself. How is the product, the process, the pricing and most of all how is the customer base. Get feedback before you over emote. Dont assume you know everything because you dont. We have all been in organizations that looked at the past year, decided what they decided about it and proceeded to go straight over the deep end. Dont do it. Identify what you did well and what you did not. 

Once you have an idea what area or areas you would like to work on take a day off. Go somewhere and do something other than work yourself into a frenzy of plans that no one will be able to implement. I once got an 82 page Powerpoint on a new process that was deemed to be flawed. I protested that training a new process from an 82 page Powerpoint might be counterproductive. I was told that page 79 was the key page so just use that. True story. This level of luancy isnt as rare as you think. Fighting complexity is the first true calling of a business leader. Simple wins.

Once you think you know what needs to be fixed congratulate yourself for being the smartest person alive and immediately do nothing. Take a breath and get ready to listen to everyone who has a stake in what you want to change. Understand how a change will impact every single person who touches it. Listen, take advice. The lower in the organzation a problem is solved the better chance the problem will stay solved. Let people have ownership. I never solved a single problem in my career. I would outline the challenge and let my people solve the problem.

Go back to go forward. Go back to a simpler time. What worked, what didnt. If you are still in business a lot was done right. Chances are complexity has crept in over time and that complexity will eventually become the key driver of non compliance. A two step process became four, then eight, then twelve. It happenned in the name of improvement but nothing was improved. But the process not only stayed, it grew. To find simplicity, go back to when it was simple. You cannot create simplicity without knowing what it looks like. If you think simplicity is an 82 page Powerpoint because you dont know any better you will never achieve true simplicity.

Routine things should be done routinely. When that happens your time can be spent dealing with out of the ordinary things. If your routine day to day items are causing constant problems look in the mirror. You have created a monster. Complexity is ruling your world. You are the 82 page Powerpoint. Go back to go forward. Subtract instead of add. Simplify. Be page 79.

So if you find yourself making resolutions, devising plans, endlessly pondering what only you have the capacity to understand, you are the issue.

If, on the other hand, you have pushed down into the organization a small number of challenges, looked for ways to simplify and asked all the right questions - Congratulations. You have gone back to go forward.