Implementing Simplicity in daily life, not easy at all!

Implementing simplicity in life is not an easy task.

Today evening, I saw a beautiful, mesmerizing, necklace which I wanted to own badly and flaunt it at a family ceremony. The price tag was a little steep, but subconsciously I made it worth peanuts to me. I booked the piece of temptation with a small advance and fixed the timing to pay the balance & collect it after a day.

At home, I shared my new purchase wish with my hubby. He asked me "why do you want to buy it more for - because you liked it or you want to flaunt it?". Hmmm..., now this was surely a bouncer, I replied for both reasons. I went to look for jewelry in the first place, because, I wanted to flaunt it.

He promptly replied,what happened about your Simplicity band wagon, did the bubble burst in just a week.

My speeding dreamy car came to an abrupt halt. He was right! I felt so ashamed of my behavior. It took me an hour to realize my folly, but I thank God that he brought me back on track.

Its really very easy to get deviated and get entangled in to the clutter. Its very easy to be a part of the maddening race to look good and show-off something which you are not.

Now, I am damn sure, I will be more happy and more free without it. I will live for myself, and enhance my inner beauty with accessories which will be with me till eternity than exterior diminishing ones.

Today, was a very important milestone for me.

Hidden cost of Workplace Complexity

Real problem is not more volume but extra complexity.

When we have more work volume from existing customers, we have to adapt to increase in volume which in turn adds to the resource cost. However, when the customer is new, their is recruiting cost and since their needs are different from the existing customers, the complexity and cost increases.

Even though the new customer is only slightly different than the existing customer, costs go up because the small change also breaks the routine and requires the manager intervention to handle the new requirements.

Stopping the work and starting it again incurs cost. Communication and miscommunication between extra people incurs time drain and hence cost. The gap and cost increases further when the work is put aside for someone else's instructions or for more clarity on customer feedback. All these costs are steep and shocking because most of the time they go unaccounted.

If this communication is across departments, offices and timezones, the result is unimaginably bad.

Increase in work volume, leads to marginal new customers and profit, but add significantly to the managerial complexity.

Management and managers both get a high from increased complexity as it interests and challenges their intellect. Hence, management and managers keep managing and encouraging complexity till it becomes unmanageable and goes completely out of control.

Alas, the cost of complexity is far more than the benefits of increased volume.

Business Volume is not all bad

Business volume and market share are important and valuable. Extra volume also helps us to spread the fixed costs. Volume also helps us in making a good sales pitch and creates confidence to approach big customers.

Business volume changes the way the world perceives your business. There is more acceptance and feel good environment. More people are hired to handle the extra volume. And the moral of the existing employees is high to see the company in the growing gear. You become a part of the preferred employer list for a lot of good talent, who earlier wouldn't even consider you worth sending their profile.

Its a feel-good environment everywhere, till the balance sheet is presented.

The bottom line still doesn't change why does high volume fail to translate in to high profits.

Why do businesses have to pay the price of shrinking margins when targeting more business volume or market share.

What can be the cause of increasing costs? More business should be more profits and the cost to profit ratio should remain the same, ideally. Converse is true though.

Real problem is not more volume but extra complexity.

Sweating the small stuff

The simple week was anything away from being simple. As one of the steps, I decided to investigate the roots of the unending list of unfinished, incomplete things. With a little push from my better half, I decided to look at the last 6 months sales reports and what was revealed was no less than a jolt for me.

The analysis put forth an alarming fact that 80% of our sales were coming from 30% of our projects. The remaining 70% of our projects were bringing the 20% sales.

70% of our projects were significantly small in revenue. They helped us gain a long list of customers and enhance our portfolio, but they were also a big time drain. They expected and received the same service like our big project customers.

Our service to our cream customers (80% sales) always suffered owing to the chaos created by the huge number of small customers.

The chaos which was result of the pressure put by huge number of small customers was building frustration with the team members, management and customers equally. At the end of a hard day, uncompleted work, annoyed customers was nothing than a nail in the coffin.

We kept on adding people to complete the unfinished work and ease the pressures, but they inturn ate our profit margins by inflating our cost. Their was no change in the situation of customer satisfaction or growth in sales , only a dry pocket.

It is high time to rethink our strategy towards sales.

Simple Week

Last entire week, I focussed on bringing clarity to each and every facet of my work life. Believe me, it was a long hard week, with very little to brag about.

In the pursuit of simplifying the environment of my office, I have focussed my attention this week on various areas:

1. Simplifying the work allocation to team members. Seeing to it that my managers do not keep shuffling their duties based on management and customer pressure. Simplifying the instructions and duties assigned to my designers and developers. Bring more clarity in making them understand our and customers' expectations from them.
   
2. Working with my marketing team to simplify and reduce the long list of pending quotations. Leads get generated and keep piling each day in the inbox of my marketing team as they do not get cleared the same day. Training sessions were scheduled with them on how to attend to leads and send initial quotes to their requests.
   
3. Studying the last 6 months sales data to assess the trend of business. More on this in the next post.
4. Working with the each individual and helping and making him focus on his work and make him use the free time to sharpen his/her skill. Average age of my team is 24-25, making them to focus and realize the importance of enhancing their skill requires sheer persistence.

Wake Up Call ! Embrace Simplicity

Lets assume that Work Complexity is wasting about 2 hrs per day per person. With a team size of 25, I am already losing 50 valuable hours a day, i.e; around 250 hrs a week. Whow!

This is a huge cost for not paying attention to simplicity. We cannot afford this for sure!!

Embracing simplicity is the only ultimate development opportunity, we have in our hands to keep the growth happening, to survive and face this chaotic world of information overdose.

So, to fight the demon of "CONFUSION", which is making such catastrophic damage, I need to get the Angel "SIMPLICITY" in to my work floor.

My first step towards, bringing "SIMPLICITY" to my floor would be to think how to stop time abuse of everyone in this organization including mine.

Choice overload is creating an opposing force. Every customer, every project, every task, every request is bartering for time and attention of me and my team members. Resulting in project delays, flawed work, unhappy clients, frustrated and drained team members.

I plan to begin using the 5 building blocks before starting any project. 5 building blocks which will be the first step towards simplicity.

The 5 Building Blocks:

KNOW - Identify the most important things of the project. Understand the project.
FEEL - Understanding what the team feels about the project. Clarify how I want them to feel about the project.
USE - Are the tools and training required for the project present.
DO - Each team member should know clearly what is expected out of him. Expectation list of project should be clear and simple.
SUCCEED - Clearly list the milestones, project completion expectation, benefits to the company and team on project success.




Photo courtesy mackz

Simplicity - need of today's world.

Everything around us is changing at a fast pace. Continuously demanding from us more, faster and better actions/reactions/results.

What's needed to survive and prosper in a chaos world in which reason no longer applies, in which you must focus on outcome, not process.

However, taxing it becomes, we cannot run away from the infinite choices thrown at us in this information age. Neither can we overlook it. Then how can we deal with this chaos around us with insufficient time at hand. There is never enough TIME to do everything. However fast you run, you still will be far behind the finish line; you will always end up having too much to cope with, too much to cover.

In our company, our worst competitor is the day-to-day confusion. Every individual takes so much time to figure out what to do and what not to do. Whose orders to follow and whose not. However, detailed we become, it only adds up to the chaos and at the end of the day we are confused about why things are not done as scheduled or as expected.Nothing works like it is supposed to, and at the end of the day makes all of us hunger for simplicity to some degree.

Its the time for all of us belonging to the age of information overload, to stop and think about our APPROACH.

Focusing on what matters most and not waste time on the rest. Simplifying Everything around us.

SIMPLICITY is a complex topic that has no single, simple answer.

In wikipedia, Simplicity is defined as the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complicated ones. Simplicity can mean freedom from hardship, effort or confusion.

By being not clear enough, we are actually abusing others as well as our own time. We need to kill the demon of "CONFUSION" to bring "SIMPLICITY" in our lives.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.