The level of complexity in most organizations today is staggering-and it's only getting worse. There are so many choices to be made, people to involve, processes to manage, and facts to analyze, it's impossible to get things done. And in today's hypercompetitive world, that can be fatal.
Yet complexity doesn't happen on its own. Managers unwittingly create it, often through well-intended decisions. In Simply Effective, Ron Ashkenas provides a playbook for regaining control, focused on the four major causes of complexity:
-Constant changes in organizational structures -Proliferation of products and services -Evolution of business processes -Time-wasting managerial behaviors
The author provides a diagnostic for identifying how these causes of complexity are affecting your organization-and presents practical tactics for combating each one.
Ashkenas also explains how to craft a strategy that will make simplification an ongoing driver of your company's success-no matter where you work in your organization. Abundant examples from companies like ConAgra Foods, GE, Cisco, Zurich Financial Services, and Johnson & Johnson illuminate his points.
A crucial resource in today's overly complex age, Simply Effective should be required reading for everyone on your management team.
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Ron Ashkenas is a Managing Partner of Robert H. Schaffer & Associates, where he consults to CEOs and senior executives on leadership, organizational transformation, and postmerger integration. He has served on the faculty of executive education programs at Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kellogg School of Management, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and Weatherhead School of Management. He is the coauthor of The Boundaryless Organization, The GE Work-Out, and Rapid Results.
Product Details
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (December 8, 2009)
Ron Ashkenas is a Senior Partner of Schaffer Consulting, a management consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut. The firm specializes in organizational transformation, leadership development, and post-merger integration.
Ron's clients have included many of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as prominent financial, governmental, and non-profit organizations such as Cisco Systems, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pfizer, The World Bank, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Zurich Financial Services, and ConAgra Foods. Ron was part of the original team that collaborated with then-CEO Jack Welch to develop GE's WorkOut approach for creating a faster, simpler, and more nimble organization. He also helped to develop GE Capital's approach to acquisition integration.
Ron is the author of "Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done" (Harvard Business School Press, 2010), as well as the co-author of "Rapid Results!" (Jossey-Bass, 2005), "The GE Work-Out" (McGraw-Hill, 2002), "The Boundaryless Organization" (Jossey-Bass, 1995 and 2002), and "The Boundaryless Organization Field Guide" (Jossey-Bass, 1999). In addition to his books, Ron's publications include dozens of articles. Five were published by the Harvard Business Review, including 'Making the Deal Real: How GE Capital Integrates Acquisitions' and 'Why Good Projects Fail Anyway'. Ron also writes his own weekly blog for Harvard Business Review On-Line.
Ron received his BA from Wesleyan University, his EdM from Harvard University, and his PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University, where he has also held several teaching assignments.
Albert Einstein said that "Everything should be made as simple as possible and no simpler."
Peter Drucker said that "Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective."
I don't know if those quotes inspired Ron Ashkenas, the author of Simply Effective, but they could have. If you're looking for ways to understand unnecessary complexity in your business and root it out, you should read this book.
The key to the value of this book is clearly stated in the Preface: The author says that the tools he refers to will probably be familiar to you. Then he says this:
"My intent is not to rehash these tools, but rather to put them in the context of how they can be used either singly or in combination to tackle different aspects of complexity--or to be woven together into a more comprehensive strategy."
What makes this a great book is the simple structure. It provides a lens you can use to spot and analyze needless or destructive complexity. And it provides guidance on what to do next.
The book begins with an introductory chapter titled: "Unmasking organizational complexity." Ashkenas says something that many of us have thought: "much of the day-to-day complexity that bogs down our ability to get results is self-inflicted." Pogo could not have said it better.
The introductory chapter describes how we create complexity without ever meaning to do so. It also describes the competitive advantage available to companies who can cauterize the complexity that degrades performance.
Ashkenas identifies four causes of complexity. Each one gets its own chapter. Each chapter describes particular causes of complexity and then discusses ways to increase simplicity....
There is a chapter on what he calls "Structural Mitosis." I would have loved a different title but there's no doubt that overly complex structures of various kinds are institutional roadblocks.
The following chapter is about "Product Proliferation." You'll discover all the kinds of complexity that come from too many products, each added for a perfectly good reason. The author doesn't say it, but this is an excellent example of how complexity can grow exponentially.
Next is a chapter on "Process Evolution" and how it often migrates to the complex. Just like with products, every complexity-increasing change happens for what appears to be a good reason.
The final core chapter is about managerial behaviors, the enemy who is us. The title is "Curbing Complexity Causing Behaviors." Unless you are vastly different from the managers I know and work with and vastly different from me, you will mutter to yourself as you spot things that you've done that made life more difficult, not easier.
The book's last two chapters are about putting things together. One is "Strategy for Simplicity" which is about how to put the tools together in a corporate environment. The other is "Simplicity Starts with You," about things you can do.
Ashkenas shares lots of examples in the book from his consulting work. Since he works with large companies, those are the examples. If you're in a smaller company or not-for-profit, you will have to do some adapting to your own situation. But because the author has done such a good job of providing structure, that should be easy.
Bottom line: If you want to gain the competitive advantage that comes from identifying, cauterizing and preventing unnecessary complexity in your company, buy this book and move it to the top of your reading list.Read more ›
Ron Ashkenas is the co-author of The Boundaryless Organization and The GE Work-Out - both fascinating reviews of how major Companies make things happen in an increasingly complicated world. In the new book, published December 2009, Ashkenas sets out a set of diagnostics, tools and processes to help us deal with complexity on a day-to-day basis.
He identifies 4 major causes of complexity:
1. Structural Mitosis - constant change in the way organizations are structured 2. Management Behaviour - which wastes time and which confuses the issues 3. Product & Service Proliferation - which makes focusing and thus managing the whole ever more difficult 4. Process Evolution - as businesses use new and varying approaches to solve problems - processes need streamlining
By his own admission, Ashkenas does not set out to create lots of new tools. Rather, he is focused on ensuring that we have the context for simplicity clearly understood so that we start to create effective response strategies - and then applying the most proven approaches to help get results. The book is liberally laced with good case studies, from GE, Conagra, Cisco, J&J and others. And at the end of each chapter there is a helpful checklist of actions that can be taken.
For example, in the chapter on "Product and Service Proliferation", Ashkenas encourages us to use effective Portfolio Analysis to identify where to focus, rationalise our brand SKU's, and use Customer Design Partnering to be sure we are meeting the most important needs. And in "Streamlining Processes", Ashkenas urges us to use Best Practice, Process Mapping (to make explicit what is implicit or taken for granted in an organization) and, of course, proven techniques such as Six Sigma and Lean.... You've also got to smile when you read about "Death by PowerPoint" when he is discussing ineffective Management behaviour.
Stepping back, Ashkenas proposes a "Simple Strategy for Simplicity", in a five step loop.
* Declare Simplicity a Business Imperative * Restructure the work and consequent organization structure to reduce complexity * Achieve early results ("quick wins") through process and product simplification * Sustain Momentum through clear and constant Communication * Repeat over time
This is a good, clear and helpful book, and the action plans suggested will definitely start to clear away the organizational clutter that we all face every day.
If I have a critique it is that Ashkenas could have gone further in two areas. First, to make even more of the power of Customer Insight in driving better business decisions and thus helping to design more effective processes. Using a "customer lens" can really break through some of the old paradigms. I have especially seen this applied in retailing, where getting the entire enterprise focused on and rewarded by customer results can be a breakthrough strategy and a clear focus for operational excellence.
And, secondly, Ashkenas only deals lightly with the emerging knowledge we have on how Social Networks create highly efficient and effective communication vehicles. He is not alone in this, as most writers still follow the "Structure follows Strategy" dictum. Yet network science is beginning to suggest common approaches that can be used independently of the actual purpose of the Enterprise.
Still, that is for future books. For today, I can fully recommend "Simply Effective" as a well-researched, well-written book packed with helpful ideas for action. A quick read, but a useful handbook to have on your desk to dip into as your work progresses.Read more ›
Ron Ashkenas is one of my intellectual heroes. I have read, reviewed, and highly-admire his previous books, notably The Boundaryless Organization, The GE Work-Out, and Rapid Results, and thus was eager to read his latest which, he explains, "is meant as a resource for managers, consultants, and others who want to engage in [an] ongoing and never-ending quest [to] engage their colleagues in an ongoing dialogue about the sources of complexity and their implications, and experiment with different approaches until they figure out what works"...or at least what will probably work for them and their organization.
Others have their reasons for praising this book. Here are three of mine. First, Ashkenas follows Einstein's admonition (quoted in the title of this review) by explaining how to complete the immensely difficult transition to what Oliver Wendell Holmes once characterized as "the other side of complexity." For example, he provides Assessment 1-1 (Pages 21-25) so that his reader can complete a self-audit by which to determine the major sources of complexity in her or his organization. He also identifies the four sources of complexity (i.e. structure, products, processes, and management behavior) and the major complexity-traps and explains how to avoid or escape from them.
I also admire how skillfully Ashkenas inserts statements throughout his narrative from those who have extensive first-hand experience with simplicity initiatives. For example, here is what a former vice chairman of GE, Floyd Trotter, has to say about the thought process that can be built into an entire culture. "We teach managers that they need to start with the `answer,' which is that their business needs double-digit earnings improvement every quarter and every year.... They quickly realize that sales growth without leverage won't do it. So they have to figure out how to drive growth while increasing productivity. We don't complicate it: Material comes in the front door and products go out the back door. We have to get rid of any waste in the middle while also figuring out how to have the products or services be more valuable for our customers."
Finally, I appreciate Ashkenas' brilliant use of specificity rather than merely recycling aphorisms, bromides, and prescriptions. In Table 7-1, he provides a Roadmap for simplicity" that specifies the causes of complexity and the approaches for increasing simplicity in four separate but interdependent areas: structural mitosis, product proliferation, process, evolution, and managerial behavior.
For individuals as well as for organizations, getting to "the other side of complexity" is a continuous process rather than achieving an ultimate objective. Ashkenas clearly agrees with Thomas Edison who once observed, "Vision without execution is hallucination." For those who are results-driven, cutting through complexity never ends. Fortunately, he offers to them an abundance of insights, observations, and suggestions that can immediately be put to use.
I presume to conclude with two suggestions of my own: First, concentrate on complexity that causes the most serious problems. When doing so, practice ruthless elimination of whatever is wasteful, redundant, obsolete, or irrelevant.
Congratulations to Ron Ashkenas on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!Read more ›
