Is Less Always More? 4 Simplicity Tips | Lisa Bodell | Big Think

Is Less Always More? 4 Simplicity Tips
Simplicity is essential to doing your best, most meaningful work. Discover how to simplify the crush of emails in your inbox and meetings on your schedule with these four guidelines.What do you at work all day? If the answer is "go to meetings and respond to emails," you are just like the many respondents interviewed by innovation expert Lisa Bodell. That response is remarkably consistent, she says, no matter the country or level of employment, suggesting that global work culture has become homogenized by international markets and communications technology.
Of course nobody's primary interest in their career is attending meetings and answering emails. People want to do meaningful work, and when rote tasks stand in their way, both the organization and individual job satisfaction suffer. The solution, says Bodell, is simplicity. But simplicity means more than minimalism, and simply stripping processes down doesn't guarantee real simplicity, which is defined by four key components:
First, be as minimal as possible, meaning get rid of extraneous parts. If you have a weekly meeting, can you do it biweekly? If you answer emails throughout the day, can you reserve one half hour in the morning and one in the afternoon, allowing the rest of your time to be spent doing meaningful work?
Second, be as understandable as possible. Confusing email chains and unspecific instruction can waste employees' valuable time, so be clear with your instruction and responses, and if you don't know the answer, simply say you'll revisit the issue at a later time.
Third, be repeatable as possible. As Bodell says: "You want teachers to make things repeatable in a classroom so we benefit from best practices. You want pilots, no matter what cockpit they go into to have the same experience so that they can fly the plane."
Finally, be as accessible as possible. Transparency is a good way to win customers and, in our age of democratized media, leveraging the power and wisdom of the crowd by creating open-source products is a way to scale innovation.
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LISA BODELL :
Lisa Bodell believes in the power of simplification. She is the founder and CEO of futurethink, a company that uses simple techniques to help organizations embrace change and increase their capability for innovation. She brings her compelling message to over 100,000 people a year, showing them how to eliminate mundane and unnecessary tasks from their everyday routine so that they have more time for work that matters. Bodell has transformed teams within organizations like Google, Novartis, Accenture, and more. Drawing on her practical Midwestern upbringing and entrepreneurial background, she has used the power of simplification to launch three successful businesses, write two books (Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins), travel to over 40 countries and 48 states, and sit on boards such as Novartis' Diversity and Inclusion Board and the Global Advisory Council for the World Economic Forum.
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TRANSCRIPT :
Lisa Bodell: Everyone says that they want to innovate but then myself and my teams would go into companies and the very people that hired us to come in and help them innovate were the very people that were holding us back from doing it when we got there. And I thought why? And it was this whole idea of risk, fear, power, control, risk aversion. And I started to ask everybody that I met a very simple question to get at the problem of why people were not able to innovate the way that they should. Here was the question: I asked them what do you spend your day doing? And do you know what the answer was? I wasn't surprised by the uniqueness of the answer, I was surprised by the absolute consistency of it.
So if I talked to let's say 100,000 people a year across all different countries, companies, industries, levels within the organization and I asked them what did they spend their day doing? Do you know what they say? Meetings and emails. Now, I believe that people get up everyday to do meaningful things. I don't have a single friend that wakes up, looks at their inbox and feels extra popular because they have more people that have contacted them. People don't want to spend their day doing that, they want to work on work that matters. So I think that getting to work that is simpler and eliminating those complexities or mundane tasks are not just going to make people more productive at work
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[oterdverg]

"Simplicity is the highest goal, only achievable when you have overcome all difficulty." - Frederic Chopin

[thomassutherland]

Simplicity the ultimate sophistication.

[thomassutherland]

In simplicity we may find clarity in chaos we may find creativity.

[voiceofaliens]

Meetings and emails might not be the work that people _want_ to do (because it might not be directly doing the projects they are assigned and get enjoyment from); however, they _are_ work that matters. Meetings and emails aren't what people spend their days doing, they are the _means_ by which they do them, and they just so happen to be universal methods, which is why everyone is saying the same thing. What they are actually doing in meetings is getting agreement toward getting things done, and what they are doing in emails is usually giving/getting answers to/from colleagues. Now, I agree that if you spend more than a third of your day doing them, then it's a bit much... except perhaps for managers and other decision makers who need to participate in more meetings to make more decisions.

[thomassutherland]

There is nothing so complicated as to make it simple.

[iknowcoho]

Simplicity = Minimal + Understandable + Repeatable + Accessible

[afrayemmorgan]

This is even more relatable and relevant now in the time of metastasizing Zoom/Teams/Webex meetings and the e-mail chains branching off of them.

[TheTarutau]

3:17 carlos would state fear, clarity, power, and old age. love it love it. emails do tend to take away the human component of the situation and distract from issues that might arise on the floor. accessibility is key but also fostering an atmosphere of participation. simplicity is an awesome framework to utilize even lao tzu stated to know the origins is to know initiation into the tao. it can also be noted in many other works. to make it as simple as derives the greatest benefit. no more no less. reminds me of occams razor.

[llackcloud]

The circle puzzle piece reminded me of Realm.

[aosaller]

But if less is more how you're keeping score?

[MrBeaux]

"If you spend less time on emails and meetings, and more time doing productive, meaningful things, you'll get more done."

Well, duh.

[seanwebb]

Oh no. I get up some days hoping to just get through the day and going home to watch the baseball game. It's great when I can point to emails and meetings as the reason that I didn't achieve anything meaningful. Ooops. It's not my fault. I showed up and did what was asked for me.

Are we going to have chicken wings now?

[Feynthot]

There is a price to pay for simplicity. You sacrifice individuality, innovation, and expertise. Simplicity is valuable when you are dealing with things like repeatable processes. Once the world settles into an understanding, you then design simplicity into your process to improve productivity and throughput. Processes work best when they evolve and then participants remove the vestigial parts through the art of business husbandry.

[cortster]

This is why I do so badly when it comes to starting a song. Too many choices for instruments and too many effects to think about. When I was limited by the music sequencer in LBP2, instead of a real DAW, I could make a song a day. Now I dread making music because of all the choices. I just want to make music, you know? Not mess around with all the effects for hours and hours, let alone have to sift through thousands of instruments and then turn said instruments into exactly what I want...

[Sillesiann]

Simplicity sounds awfully complicated.

[HaikesXO]

I spend my days smoking weed watching these videos.

[magicbuskey]

Do you think managers, directors and CEOs will finally listen to you? The workers have been telling them this for years.

[franzhaas]

THE BEST WAY TO RUN THE COMPANY IS THROUGH GUILT TRIPPING AND GASE LIGHTING.

[sofreakengaming]

Simplicity is a way of life not achievement.

[JurijPopotnig]

Our economic system simply doesn't allow simplicity. It works exactly the opposite way and a fish rots from the head down. So: NO.