TBM 28/52: First Focus. Then Simplify

Simplification highlights how leaders can manage the conditions in which people are operating, so solving problems—particularly complex ones—is quicker, easier, and more productive. Simplification moves people in the direction of the winning zone via the following: •Easier experiments: Simplification creates opportunities to solve smaller problems;

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Simplification highlights how leaders can manage the conditions in which people are operating, so solving problems—particularly complex ones—is quicker, easier, and more productive. Simplification moves people in the direction of the winning zone via the following: •Easier experiments: Simplification creates opportunities to solve smaller problems;

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Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve somethin... See more

effective strategy:

1. Diagnosis - a theory describing the nature of the challenge. This is trying to identify the root cause(s) at play, for example “high work-in-progress is preventing us from finishing any tasks, so we are increasingly behind each sprint” might be a good diagnosis


2. Guiding policy - a series of general policies which will be applied

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If you look around, you’ll notice the people and organizations moving the fastest are the focused ones. Not only do they focus on a few ideas, but within the scope of those ideas, they are able to focus on the key variables.

Identifying the variables that matter comes with focus. When you commit to living in a problem, you understand things about i... See more

“Simple is nearly always better. But if it’s going to be complicated, then make sure the problem is worth the complexity. A great deal of time is wasted creating complex solutions to relatively unimportant problems.”

What I've come to recognise as core to my practice is the challenge of taking an extraordinarily complex, integrated, incomplete problem and wrapping my arms around it conceptually in a way that helps and empowers practitioners to actually do things about it.