Simpler Business Institute

My first newsletter generated a range of comments and questions, one being "what is the role of technology in a simpler business - are you saying we should not be adopting new technology?"

Because technology is an important issue for business simplification, I'm devoting this newsletter to answering the question.

If we begin with Leonardo Da Vinci's quote that "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", those who have already simplified parts of their business interpret this as meaning "the goal of sophistication, including innovative technology, is to simplify our lives."

This is certainly a customer-focused view. Recall for the moment how many ads appear on TV for products designed to reduce work and take the stress out of busy mothers' days. And now think about advertising for home handyman items for the DIY dads. A lot of these products involve technology that makes it simpler to perform our tasks.

And moving into the work space, you'll be able to identify a range of technologies that have simplified work over the past couple of hundred years - telecommunications, transport technologies, robotics for accuracy and safety, management information systems instead of endless calculations by groups of clerks, and so on.

I'm certainly convinced that a key driver of many of these innovations has been to try to make our lives simpler and easier. The ones that have been most successful have generally been the innovations that achieve the desired outcome in the simplest way possible (at the time).

It leaves me in no doubt that technology and innovation can be key drivers in making a business simpler and more profitable.

But it does bring home that many technological products in the past and present have not helped to simplify our lives or our work.

In my earlier experience as an engineer then as a manager, I often found that implementing new technology was not as profitable as expected because all we did was to automate some process that was very complex in the first place. In hindsight, we should have firstly tried to simplify the process, then introduce the technology, to ensure we ended up with simpler work for ourselves and our workforce.

In McKinsey & Company's 1995 book "Simplicity Wins" which reports on the results of a 5-year research exercise over 39 companies in Europe, there is a beautiful quote - "Adding complexity to cope with complexity is a seriously flawed approach". How often have we done this in business over the years - tried to solve a complex problem by introducing something even more complex?

This has become one of the key lessons to learn in simplifying business - Simplify before automating! It will provide a huge competitive advantage.

So is technology important to simplifying business? Absolutely!

The tools and techniques to simplify a business cover both the products and the processes and also the management of these. They are designed to achieve a good or a great result using fewer resources and with less stress on the management team and the workforce.

If you haven't already done so, please read the case studies and testimonials from people whose business lives have changed for the better - see www.simplerbusiness.com .

My goal with this newsletter is to reach those owners and managers who wish to improve their business performance and their lives by simpler approaches to success rather than more complex and costly ones.

If you have any friends or colleagues whom you think will get value from the message in these newsletters, or have already simplified part of their business, please forward it on to them. The more people we can get to share their simple techniques for success, the more sustainable will our business sector become.

Simply does it!

Ian Dover

PS If you wish to access any previous issues of the Simpler Business Newsletter, please click on the Newsletter tab at www.simplerbusiness.com .