Why Simple Wins

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Lisa Bodell. She is the CEO of Future Think and author of Kill the Company and a really great book, Lisa, Why Simple Wins. Well, I want to talk about that because simplicity is well, it's one of my challenges. In any event, Lisa is on a mission to create space for change and innovation in organizations using the power of simplicity. By the way, there's a ton of really great stuff at the Future Things website, which is a futuresite.com. Lisa. Thank you. I know you're super busy. I know you travel a lot and are doing some amazing things. And thanks for writing the book. It was really a fun read.

Lisa Bodell: Thank you for reading it. I have to tell you, it was one part creativity as I love to write and another part therapy for me because I wrote the book really to kind of solve the problem for myself.

Anita Brick: Well, I'm glad you did. Making things simple is actually much harder. So let's jump in. A weekend student asked a question to get us kicked off, and he said, how do you define simplicity in a way that makes it actionable, understandable, and accessible?

Lisa Bodell: I love it. There's a lot of thought leadership and definitions for complexity, but there's very little from a business context around complexity. People know what when they see it or they know it when they feel it. I had to spend a lot of time coming up with a terrible acronym, mirror, mirror to get people thinking differently of how they can approach implicitly.

MRA stands for minimal, understandable, repeatable, and accessible. If you remember that, you can approach everything you do using all the key ways to simplify, not just eliminating or minimizing. Because I think when people think about simplicity, their first reaction is, oh, let's just eliminate it or let's minimize it. I definitely think that's important. That's one of the first things you can do to eliminate the question of why something has to happen.

But there's many more things than just getting rid of or streamlining things to make things simple, to make it understandable. Clarity and the overuse of jargon or big words. Those kinds of things are a big problem today. People write emails in a much longer way than they need to. We force people to just use the subject line for their email.

The other thing is we make things repeatable. People spend too much time reinventing the wheel. The other one that's often overlooked is really just making things accessible. I can tell you a really great corporate culture when people share and they're free with giving information to others within the company and outside of the company, like when Google opened up their code to everybody, that was shocking.

It was shocking to look at what that did for them in terms of scaling and growing, because they invited everybody into the process and people trusted Google more because they weren't afraid to give things away. So just to kind of bring it back, simplicity is many things beyond just minimizing. It's also making things understandable, repeatable, accessible. If you approach all the things that you do with that context in mind, you'll be able to simplify things more than you think.

Anita Brick: I think it also depends on what's been rewarded. And there was another weekend student who said, I historically enjoy making this simple, complicated, and in fact, it's a family tradition and I can't seem to break free. What do you recommend as a good first step? How do you go from being rewarded? And I think in many places, whether it's in academia or, you know, when we're in school or later in the workplace, sometimes complicated things are given bigger kudos.

Lisa Bodell: First of all, you're right. We value it more. We think that being more busy makes us more valuable. And that's not the case. But outcomes, not actions is my point. We need to start asking better questions on how we do things. Questions the assumptions around how things have to be. All too often we just assume that there's a way to do things because that's the way it's always been done, or we just add on to something that's already existing because that's the easiest thing to do.

Then really stopping and saying, what would be the best way to approach that? So one of the things that we did in the book is we taught people to ask some really extreme and provocative questions so they could get in their comfort zone and really get comfortable with getting rid of something because we like to hold on to things.

That's part of the problem. We ask people to actually start asking questions like, how can I get rid of 50% of this program process policy meetings that I have? The reality is you won't get rid of half of them, but you'll start getting in the habit of approaching things that way, and eventually we'll be able to get rid of things in your life that really, you'll see, aren't that.

Anita Brick: Important, isn’t it. The question first, is that the first step, or is there a mindset that needs to come first before the questions can be answered in a way that will make things simpler?

Lisa Bodell: Very good point. I mean, the first thing is actually saying I'm going to approach everything with simplification in mind. When you do that, you're giving yourself permission and creating the space for that habit to take form. What happens is most people, if they have good intentions, but then they don't go in with a simplification, mindset or commitment to their work every day.

So to your point, that is the first step because you're in that mindspace then when you do that, starting to ask these questions and figuring out what kinds of things can they pilot getting rid of or behaviors they can start changing so they can really make simplification a reality. And sometimes it's a hard first step. You have to be provocative and simplify.

Of course, you can complain all day that you're not given permission or power to the boss is the problem. But often we don't realize that we ourselves are the ones that create unnecessary complexity. We need to start changing our habits and behaviors in our own work, meetings, emails, etc. to show how you want to be dealt with, how you want things to be simplified.

There's ways that you can start to change things in your own work in small ways. Before you start taking bigger things within your company or your life. It takes focus and discipline, and we talk a little bit about that as one of the traits of a simple fire. The mindset of a simplifier acts and behaves in certain ways, and it's a very bold type of person.

They act with focus. They don't get distracted by a million projects. They stick to their mission. They're decisive. Not making a decision can be a real complexity creating thing. They're minimalist. They definitely know how to minimize and say, what's the least amount that we need to do to get to our goal. And they're results oriented so they know it's about the outcome, not the action.

We've become very busy doing and being very activity focused, because we think that that has more value, when in fact it's the outcomes that we need to be more focused on. And so the types of people that can do that stuff being very outcome oriented, results oriented, focused, etc., those are the ones that I know will become the Chiefs amplifiers within their company.

Anita Brick: A very good point. We did the evening students in his company being overwhelmingly busy. You get kudos for that. What can you recommend on how I can simplify my approach to work without losing the hard work or branding that I have in the company?

Lisa Bodell: Hard work could be tied to outcomes. Not actually. What you want to do is, for example, on people's status report rather than talking about the task they're going to do that week, what are the outcomes that they're going to do that week? Because the results are what matter. The other thing you can do is start being the person that's in charge of moving the business forward, by getting rid of things that are inefficient.

We teach people to do a technique called kill a stupid rule or kill stupid meetings. And what this does is you become the guy that says, you know, I think we should get rid of this rule because it will allow us the time to do X. I think we should kill these meetings because it will give us X money, more hours, time to do Y.

For example, within Merck Canada, they did kill stupid meetings. They audited all the meetings within this one group that they do throughout the year, you know, both scheduled and random and ad hoc, etc. and they test themselves with killing 50% of they didn't get 50, but they got 18% of them and each person added to their time but two hours a week to do more meaningful work because they weren't wasting it. Stupid meetings. It's those kinds of disciplines, tactics, practices. They can free yourself up to be more focused on the outcomes versus the activities.

Anita Brick: In the case that you gave at Merck, the senior leadership was all behind it. Where are some places that someone can start if no one's behind it except for you?

Lisa Bodell: Well, it's interesting. There are informal, informal webinars, but lots of companies are making simplicity a habit. For example, within Google they have random teams that have started their own cut the craft committees. And these are people that have tasked themselves within a group to say, hey, we're all so busy will be the two or 3 or 4 people that are tasked with looking at how everyone works and suggesting ways that we can actually amplify.

Those are small little things teams can do. You personally can audit your own work and figure out what if you didn't do some of these things, like what are the meetings that might be zombie meetings that have just gone on forever, and about what their time? What are some of the habits you have in terms of the meetings you run?

Could you run them in a shorter period of time or do them less frequently? Decision making. Are there layers of decision making with you or your team that you could speed up or require less people involved? Can you stop sending emails to people that include messages and only include the decision makers? These are little things that you can do.

Anita Brick: Got it. What seems like one thing that gets in the way of this? This was an exact MBA student who was asking about the whole dreaded multitasking. She said, I'm an avid multitasker. I believe out of necessity, and my friends and family tell me I would be even more effective if I focus on one thing at a time. Not really sure how this is possible. Any advice on this? Greatly appreciate it.

Lisa Bodell: This is one of those where they have to change their habits. I agree that there are certain things you can do, mundane tasks you can accomplish. At the same time, I often read my news while I'm eating my dinner. Those are like mundane tasks you could do together, but for important tasks, you should do them separately. And the science shows us that you need to, because when you multitask, you are worse.

Problem solver. You miss things. You do a worse job than if you had handled a task on its own. It behooves them both from a career and a value standpoint to do meaningful things one at a time. I actually do an exercise with people to show them why this is important, and why they have to get more disciplined about it.

I have people stand up and I ask them to cast their head, rub their stomach and click their heels, and after a few seconds, people start doing it. They start doing all three at the same time, and I stop them and I say, how many people were able to do all those things at the same time? And almost everyone raises their hand.

And I said, that's not what I asked you to do. I asked you to pat your head, rub your stomach and click your heels. You assumed that you would do all those things. And that's what happens. As leaders, we assume that multitasking is better and it's not. And we assume that everything has the same level of importance. So in the case of the student, I would say they have to be disciplined about doing meaningful things one at a time.

It might behoove them that when they have a list of to dos, to rank them in terms of level of importance, force themselves to rank them so they don't feel like everything has the same sense of urgency. That's the trap that people fall into and it's not true. A couple things they could do to get started.

Anita Brick: How do you help people get the level of subtlety about really taking okay, I know you believe all of these are all ten items are equally important. Sounds like you're really good with questions. Are there any questions that this woman could ask herself about how to actually have a filter? That is a useful one?

Lisa Bodell: Yes, there's a couple of things. People all think everything's important and everything has to be done because they're not stopping to think they're in the do mode, not to think not. So we gotta get it back to outcomes. So I would look at each of those tasks and say, which one of these is the most important to get you to your outcome?

If they say that all of them are, I would say, is there a certain order that you should do these and that would make you more effective or get you to your goal faster if they say no? I think what would be interesting for some people to do is write down on a piece of paper a teacher, and on the left side is what you spend your time doing, and you just check this out for a week.

Could things like meetings, emails, specific reports, policy meetings, client calls, etc. be as specific as possible, and at the of that we can look at the list and circle those things that they say are valuable or meaningful work, and that means things that get them to their goals. And you would be surprised how few things are circular.

And it's okay to say, well, of course I didn't circle meetings and emails, but I have to do those things. Yeah, but you're spending all your time on those things and they're not getting you to the bigger picture. Client calls Ideating creative problem solving and coming up with new, innovative solutions because you're using meetings and emails with an excuse, the things that are circled, why are they circle?

Why are they meaningful, and how can you do more of those things? And how you do that is by getting rid of improving those things that aren't circles. So when people say that everything is important, that's what we want to figure out what is really meaningful. If there's not a priority to them and they're not circled, how can we make that, eliminate them or make them better? Because you should only be focused on meaningful work.

Anita Brick: I think so, and this actually came from an old one in the whole early stage startup guide to get to the next round of funding in the entrepreneurial world, a lot of things can feel really overwhelming. And this is what he said he was six months ago. I launched a startup with two other co-founders. It was an idea that seemed simple, straightforward, and meaningful.

Now it feels like we're bogged down in so many decisions that feel more complex than they need to be. How do you advise others to take a step back when you're in an early stage company and simplify so finely?

Lisa Bodell: I was reading Fred Wilson's blog. He's a VC here, his blog is a VC and he's working in Square Ventures, and he wrote about startups that he sits on board of. And he says the biggest issue with so many of them is once they get an infusion of capital and they've got a product launch, they feel like they got to start doing a whole bunch of special projects.

And what happens is if these special projects take you away from your focus. So I'm getting back to focus again. You feel like being busy doing more is more valuable. And in fact, he says the problem is that the resources that could be focused on the ships and it's all about getting to mission, succeeding with mission. And when you're doing all these other ancillary projects like this, alarm is saying you're distracting from your mission.

And so you really have to think about, are those really important? And of course, some people will say, well, yeah, we got to stay innovative. If you're not focused on the important stuff first, you can't be focused on these other things. To me, it sounds like they got busy and that made them unfocused. I would actually look at the pipeline of what they're developing and either prioritize or eliminate some of those projects so they can get back to the work. That actually.

Anita Brick: Makes sense. There was a question from an MBA student who's in transition, and she said, I'm in the middle of a career change, and the complexity feels overwhelming since I have control over what I do. What advice have you given others on how to take a complex project and make it actionable rather than paralyzing?

Lisa Bodell: Well, it's interesting because most people, the thing that they have a hard time with in terms of creative problem solving or simplifying is so they look at it as a big thing versus breaking it down into actionable parts, because it's less about, oh, my life is so complex. It's more about actionable things that they can actually make happen. Right now. So breaking into parts and questioning those assumptions is really what we do by breaking things down and forcing people to look at it with a hard lens.

Anita Brick: Can you think about a time when someone was so adamant that this wasn't going to work, and then they turned the corner. They wanted to hold on to the complexity out of fear or whatever reason. And then they turned the corner. What allowed them to turn the corner and basically let that all go?

Lisa Bodell: It's a few things. And one instance when I was working with a publisher, they absolutely thought that they couldn't get rid of some of their reporting. You know, that sort of fear and control, they want to just have more KPIs they can measure and more things and more and more and more and, you know, to what end. So we said, what if we piloted getting rid of half of these KPI?

They freaked out. What if we just piloted it? Because that gives people a level of comfort. There's so much fear. Fear drives so much complexity. And we said, well, we'll try this for a couple months, and if nobody really misses it, then we'll pilot again for a couple more months. And if nobody really misses this, then we'll look at actually making that reduced amount of KPIs the way that you do business.

And that's what they did. It was giving them an out right by not making it permanent. They were piloting something. So that's one thing you can do. The other thing is to choose something small and try that first. Don't get rid of a whole technology development program. Get rid of one part of it so they can start with baby steps.

The other thing is about removing a barrier, but one thing that's really effective with people is to kill a stupid rule. What that does is allow people to identify barriers that are holding them back, and talk to the group of why that happens, and what they can do to eliminate it, like what things that they love to kill and why haven't they done it.

And what's really interesting about that is when people start to kill rules, it becomes contagious. And I'll tell you once it's on HBO, they did a kill a stupid rule within one group that was particularly Maverick. It was so successful and got them back so much of their time. They actually created their own Google Doc and posted it up for other people to look at and try to kill the same rule.

It was contagious with other groups. Hey, why am I not given permission or empowered to do those things? And then, you know, a boss doesn't want to look bad. We're not allowed to kill rules here. You absolutely can because it makes you more efficient, looks better as a boss, creates a better culture. So killing a stupid rule is really great because it gives you efficiency on the outside, but on the inside it makes it contagious in a way that people want to come on board.

Anita Brick: I like that you create this competition. You know what it means? Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Bodell: You know what they left out of that? You never really see groups in groups of people begging for more work, but people that can get on board with doing that thing of getting rid of something, man, that box gets full pretty quickly.

Anita Brick: I like that it applies at a lot of different places because it does. Ultimately, as you said, multiple times, it frees you up for more fun, more meaningful things.

Lisa Bodell: To do more meaningful work. You know what's interesting about my research on simplicity is this is not about better time management. That's not it at all. All of us here that are listening, I'm sure are really good with multitasking and checking things off a to do list, and I get a high from crossing everything off that list. Right.

It's like the basic sense of satisfaction. It's not about crossing things off your list, it's about what's on your list in the first place. And are you spending your time on meaningful things? So that's the psychology shift that needs to happen, because then you'll start to get comfortable with, hey, congratulations to all your friends who are busy, busy, busy. But you're going to be more satisfied because you're doing good stuff.

Anita Brick: I think where people sometimes get a little wrapped around the actual is that is that meaningful, doesn't immediately get connected to outcome meaningful. It's like, yeah, wouldn't it be cool? I get to do things that I am passionate about. But you're saying, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying meaningful is a higher outcome. Meaningful is higher return, not just feel good stuff.

Lisa Bodell: That's exactly right. You have a satisfaction level because you're able to get things done. For all the actions that we have, we don't seem to be getting a lot done. Very good point, Lisa, do you have.

Anita Brick: Time for one more.

Lisa Bodell: Question? Sure. Of course.

Anita Brick: Okay, good. You've given us a lot of good information, a lot of good insights. What are three things that someone who wants to make things less complex, make things simpler, can begin doing today?

Lisa Bodell: One of the things we talk about is just changing the frequency of something. We tend to fall into a rut. We automatically schedule calendar things to be a weekly need. Do they need to be weekly? Our default outlook for 60 minutes? Maybe they could be 45 minutes, that kind of stuff. The other thing somebody did with email that I thought was great, as they did something called an NTR.

Whenever you saw a subject line that had more in it, is that no need to respond? That got rid of a lot of those five, I got it, thanks. You know things that clutter your inbox. Get rid of those emails because people just focused on reading it. They didn't have to feel the political check off and correspond back.

You can also just as the subject line to your email too. That's kind of an easy thing to keep things short. And another thing people do is they practice no scroll emails. If you have to scroll to read the email, it should have been an attachment or you could pick up the phone. The other thing that I think is really fun is setting up these committees like these cut the crap committees, because it starts to send a signal that getting rid of complexity is important, and that there are people specifically assigned to get rid of stuff so they are empowered.

There will be outcomes in their findings to get rid of things. And that's a simple thing you can do that doesn't need a big structure, approval, etc. and the last thing I would say is stupid rule. I think you could just do that immediately. Audit all the rules and crazy things that hold you back and make you frustrated, and commit to getting rid of two things.

Anita Brick: That's good. Any other final words of wisdom?

Lisa Bodell: I would say, remember, just because it's organized doesn't mean it's simplified. And that's a big misconception right now. In today's business world, we make things organized. But man, we don't do it the simple way. Focus with simplicity in mind, doing less and making it better versus getting it organized. That'll go a long way in the corporate world.

Anita Brick: Thank you so much already. The wheels are turning. Okay, what are the two things I do today that maybe I don't need to continue to do? So thank you for that. In a world where alumni certainly are very busy, but students, family, work, school, all of the above, being able to simplify could make their lives a lot better. So thank you for writing the book and thank you for making the time to chat with me today.

Lisa Bodell: Oh thank you. I really appreciate it.

Anita Brick: Great, and lots of really interesting things on Lisa's company site are future. Thanks. Thanks again Lisa.

Lisa Bodell: Thank you.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.