A calm and clear mind is your greatest ally on ‘the project battlefield’. Cut through complexity and achieve clarity — here’s how.
Complexity prevails in most operational environments
Complexity is noisy, dramatic … and convenient!
How does complexity relate to effective change? Simplifying complex concepts into more straightforward ideas is one way to influence change. But not everyone is going to be enthusiastic about simplification.
An organisation’s operational tempo is contagious! Report deadlines, surprises, functional changes, new systems… it is easy also to get caught up in unimportant yet seemingly urgent tasks. Some people thrive on the chaos and drama that complexity brings. Others bury themselves in it. Some have an agenda, and as part of this agenda do not want others to have a clear understanding.
Managers love complexity as complexity is stimulating and intellectually challenging ¹— Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle.
Complexity can sometimes mean ‘busy work’ (looking busy, but not accomplishing anything). Some people prefer to engage in busy work than focus on results. Perhaps you have worked with people who like to make an industry out of simple tasks.
Yet sometimes complexity starts even before hiring anyone. Specific jobs may be designed to increase complexity, or not link to the core function of the organisation. David Graeber’s 2013 essay ‘On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs’ is a beautiful rant about ‘pointless jobs’ ². There may be several ‘types’ of these jobs, including what Graeber refers to as ‘duct tapers’, ‘box tickers’ and ‘task masters’ ³.
As change professionals, it is useful to ask ourselves often: Did our efforts today contribute to the change we are influencing? Were we on our ‘critical path’ for our change, or did we get caught up in meetings and minutiae? Did we get bogged down in the inertia of data, processes, and a tangled web of complexity?
It is self-evident — a clear and calm mind is an incredible ally. A clear mind opens opportunities to be open to insights, capturing and closing loose ends, and calmly executing change.
This calm translates to confidence in project board meetings and status updates. It also gives us space to figure out how to solve problems in one step, rather than four. Do I print that quick reference guide, head down to Officeworks to get it laminated, find the address of that person I need to send it to, then Express Post it to them? No, wait –email the soft copy to the person, and ask them to take care of it for me.
On the outside, the one-step solution seems obvious, even laughable. But when buried in complexity, can we see a viable one-step solution in front of us?
Complexity and its many causes
When you write a document containing complex concepts, your first draft will be convoluted. When publishing your first draft, is inflicting your complicated work with minimal editing a form of laziness? Perhaps. Could there be an emotional component to just getting your thoughts on paper and moving on? It is 9:22 pm, and you have put so much of yourself into this work. Exhausted, you are at your “limit”, and you are ready to publish and move on. Do your writing peers seem to churn out words effortlessly? Do you have training, experience, and confidence in editing? Can you tolerate the discomfort of repeated editing and stripping your words back to a core message? Do you want to express yourself in grandiose ways, thinking this is better than writing in simple ways?
It is easy for business units to evolve in similarly convoluted ways, with no-one willing or able to prune an operation back to its essentials? And what of the people who shroud themselves in complexity for many reasons? Sometimes it feels just too hard to take the extra effort to eliminate the unnecessary. Organisations might stay ‘complex’ for similar reasons as our writer. These reasons include:
· Lack of energy
· Preoccupation with others
· Lack of training/experience/confidence
· Distress intolerance
· Pride and vanity
The reasons behind why business units stay mired in complexity may shed light on their change readiness. Ask many people in a team why they stay with the status quo, and they may speak of various reasons why “we still do these things”. What is their opinion on the leading causes? You may find the “reward” for staying in their current state is one of the above reasons.
It is also worth asking about the influence of other teams, their leaders, and other factors in keeping people stuck in the status quo. Change readiness research suggests the effect of people’s thoughts and feelings intermingle to influence attitudes, job performance and supportive behaviours ⁴. This process occurs separately in people as an individual professional and a group member.
Change may be thrust upon impacted stakeholders, originating from a business case, funding, and a clear mandate. While the people you are speaking to can adapt to change, understanding the leading reasons for staying where they are is vital to know. Probing individual’s change readiness and asking them to consider their point of view as both an individual and a member of the team may provide you with useful data. This data can help you assess change readiness. You may also gain insight in how you can untangle some obstacles to individuals and groups adjusting to your change.
You wouldn’t understand
As a change professional, I love hearing the words “You wouldn’t understand it.”
Whatever “it” is, does not matter. It is an open challenge to a stubborn, unconventional person like me. The person telling me something about themselves, albeit indirectly. Maybe they do not understand “it” themselves, or they know “it” (kind of), but do not want to tell me? The latter is due either to vested interests, or a belief that I’m not going to understand, so why bother?
So it’s a problem with their skill or will. Either way, their response has piqued my interest in solving this problem!
In a change professional’s context, “it” could be a tangled web of systems and business processes. Stakeholders may feel safe in this tangled web of a work ecosystem. Despite their overt complaints about it they will stay in their web if not pressed into action. “It” could be an office location, or an existing organisation structure or the data flows within a system.
Do you seek many sources of job satisfaction? Distilling complexity is an excellent source!
The antidote to complexity
One: Tune out noise. It is ruthless, challenging yet rewarding.
While changing circumstances and market conditions mean complexity will always be here, aim to prune extraneous noise. This noise reduction can help reduce the feeling of complexity when you think about your activities in the next few working days on your project. Here is a one-minute video with helpful hints for managing complexity.
What models can you use to create a clear and clean understanding of your stakeholders, risks/issues, timelines, and assumptions?
What change deliverables and artefacts should you focus on?
Who (or what) can help you gain a good picture of your stakeholder’s current state?
Where did you spend your time today at work? Fighting fires, getting stuck into nitty-gritty project issues, answering individual stakeholder questions, thinking through your change planning, or calmly creating scalable, durable deliverables that help hundreds or thousands of people?
What thorny problems on your project are keeping you up at night?
Where are you expending unnecessary mental energy?
It is worth tidying up the above loose ends, unnecessary energy expenditure, and taking time each day to progress significant items on your to-do list. You may have to push back on interruptions or allow yourself to step away from endless notifications. You might have to step away from immediate demands temporarily so that you can focus on your change’s “critical path”.
Being in a Zen-like state is a beautiful aspiration. There is no past and no future. Only what is in front of you — with no judgement. Just doing whatever it is, without worry about anything. On a busy project, life is not going to be Zen-like for long. But even for a short while (even if it is 30 minutes each day!), how can you arrange your time and mindset accordingly? Will honest answers to the above questions help reduce the feeling of complexity you face in the next few working days on your project?
Two: Models and systems are your friends
You can apply many models and systems to help you reduce complexity. In practice, I use and recommend the following conceptual models. Each help break down complex processes and linkages into simpler, manageable chunks.
· Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule)¹ ⁵ ⁶
· Inputs / throughputs / outputs ⁷
· Spreadsheets
· Theming qualitative data and clustering
· Gantt charts/timelines
Pareto Principle: I ask — what 20% of my activities, time spent, stakeholders and other ‘inputs’ contribute to 80% of my results? Results include deliveries I can tick off on the project plan, return on my time, tangible answers to questions about the change. I ask this question often. If something is wasting my time or diminishing my energy — why am I focussing on it in the first place?
Inputs/throughputs/outputs: I open Microsoft PowerPoint and draw three boxes. One for inputs, one for throughputs and one for outputs. Then I book a meeting with the team who told me “you won’t understand how we operate”.
In the next sixty to ninety minutes, I look at what inputs to their team exist. For example, a front counter has customers turning up. What questions do customers ask? Can you cluster most of these questions into a few themes? Throughputs are the functions the team serve. They may answer some questions, ring up a cash sale, or triage other problems to another team. Outputs are the end results of the team’s work. There may be a question answered, or triaged, or a sale.
This model applies to team operations, computer systems and a range of problems. Do not be overly precise; note down each input, throughput, and output in the relevant boxes. You can draw arrows between boxes to show cause-and-effect. Your single page will be messy after a while and will need a few revisions. This model, with some careful facilitation and active listening is one way to simplify complexity.
Spreadsheets: Reconciling lists of people is a regular part of a change professional’s job. It is worth investing in excellent spreadsheeting skills. This skill helps you reconcile lists of people, prepare summaries and dynamic reports on stakeholder data, and to neatly format change impact assessments.
Theming qualitative data and clustering: So, you have over five hundred survey responses with several comments per response. You now have a set of qualitative data to trawl through. Maybe leave this for someone else? You do not have to. Can you eyeball each comment and capture a one or two-word theme for each comment? Can you ensure similar comments link to a particular theme? By having the confidence to assess comments quickly, and link each to a theme, you can distil thousands of comments (or data points) into manageable themes. With sound spread sheeting skills, your themes can link to each comment, and you can then produce useful summaries and dynamic reports on your themes. Clustering follows a similar logic to theming — what concepts are similar, and therefore can be clustered together? If you are developing user personas, you may need to look at your representative people, and cluster similar attributes.
Gantt charts/timelines: Maybe leave Microsoft Project and twenty-thousand line project plans with dependencies to others. However, a one-page PowerPoint change timeline works wonders in arranging significant deliverables and clarifying your thinking. Maybe this approach works so well that it becomes the backbone for your change plan?
Recap
Complexity is noisy, overwhelming — and convenient for many people. It does not mean that you need to be swept up in the chaos like many others. Delving into why their current state rewards your stakeholders may provide you insights to aid change readiness. These insights may elevate a change “done to people” into a genuinely successful change. Your insights may have led to approaches where you untangled the emotional and cognitive drivers preventing people from adjusting to your change!
There are ways to reduce your feelings of complexity, which may be uncomfortable at first, yet ultimately rewarding. By reducing your feelings of complexity, your mind is open to new ideas. You can also be more proactive in applying models to break down “large” problems into smaller, manageable concepts. Models, systems and clustering similar concepts are your friends in reducing complexity — and building your confidence as a change professional. A clear mind is a powerful ally in planning and executing your change.
Your call to action
What steps can you take today to reduce complexity within your project?
My book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out my online course on Change Management.
Reference List
1. Koch R. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less. Nicholas Brealey; 1998.
2. Graeber D. STRIKE! Magazine — On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. STRIKE!. 2013. https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/. Accessed November 11, 2020.
3. Pash C. An author has identified 5 categories of “bullshit jobs” to be found in corporate Australia | Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bullshit-jobs-australia-2018-7. Published 2018. Accessed November 11, 2020.
4. Rafferty AE, Jimmieson NL, Armenakis AA. Change Readiness: A Multilevel Review. J Manage. 2013;39(1):110–135. doi:10.1177/0149206312457417
5. Koch R. The 80/20 Revolution. London UK: Nicholas Brealey; 2002.
6. Koch R. Living the 80/20 Way. London UK: Nicholas Brealey; 2004.
7. IPO model — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPO_model#cite_note-grady-1. Accessed November 11, 2020.