Simplicity

Major change fails 75% of the time because organizations attempt to make organizational change using a piecemeal and analytical approach to a systems problem.

What can be done to change that? For successful transformation to occur, there must be a 180º shift in our thinking. The organization must shift towards a simple, more holistic way of thinking known as Systems Thinking.

According to over 50 years of scientific research, Systems Thinking is an old/new orientation to life. It is the “natural way the world works” and thus, is a more natural and integrated view of living systems, such as individuals, teams and organizations as they try to survive and thrive in today’s dynamic and complex environment.

By understanding the simple fundamentals of how the world works as a system at many levels, it is possible to work through complexitiy and achieve effective and sustainable results.

The Haines Centre has identified the keys to achieving simplicity within any organization, using the Rules of Three:

• Ask the #1 systems question: What are your purposes/goals/visions?
• Create and use simple documents, a maximum of one page each (two sided)
• Utilize the three minute rule: if something cannot be explained in three minutes or less, the essence of the dialogue is lost on the audience

The three main premises of creating simplicity are:

• Planning and change are the primary jobs of leaders
• People support what they help create
• Use Systems Thinking to focus on outcomes and serve the customer

Three things to do:

• Set up Simplicity Police in your organization to root out complexity and bureaucracy (use a cross-section of informal leaders to do so)
• Let us conduct our Blow Out Bureaucracy and Costs two-day workshop to root out waste, complexity and bureaucracy (over $1 million in specific savings as a minimum)
• Always ask these questions:

1. what are the goals/purposes?
2. who else to involve?
3. what are the unintended consequences? (troubleshoot decisions)

Simplicity and Strategic Thinking Services

Our Strategic Thinking Services show you how to achieve and sustain simplicity on the far side of complexity. This means our services identify and capture (not ignore) the complexity. We then identify its elegant simplicity and tailor systemic solutions to your needs.

The way you think creates the results you get. The most powerful way to impact the quality of your results is to improve the way you think.

As Albert Einstein once said, “we don’t need to think more, we need to think differently!”

Simplicity of Systems Thinking Model: Our Core Technology

To fully understand the systems concept, it is crucial to understand that a system is more than an entity as a whole – it is a living, breathing process requiring inputs, outputs and feedback from it’s environment. The following conceptual model of a system provides a simple and clear visual.