Is Your Remote Team Suffering From Complexity? 5 Warning Signs
By Lisa Bodell for Forbes
From a perfume-counter-turned-pop-up-truck to rental-car companies targeting germaphobes, many businesses have operated faster and better during COVID than ever before, according to a recent McKinsey survey. If “faster and better” doesn’t accurately describe your company’s response to the pandemic, your workplace may have a complexity problem.
In my latest book, Why Simple Wins, I write about a large financial institution that spent more than $1M implementing an internal system to “spur innovation.” Only 50% of its employees knew the system existed, and less than 1% knew how to submit new ideas to the system. Why? Because there was no plan to communicate the function of the new system to employees or train them to use it.
The system was too complicated for its intended purpose, and so it went unused. Yet the innovation team framed the creation of the system as a win — despite the lack of ROI. In complex organizations, stories like this unfold every day. Besides a relentless commitment to the status quo, companies in need of simplifying often share these five signs of complexity:
Everyone speaks in acronyms and corporate-ese. Is every Zoom call littered with acronyms? Have you googled the meaning of an abbreviation today? In my experience, employees in organizations with layers of complexity default to clichéd business speak rather than words that are easily understood. Unless everyone interprets the jargon or acronym exactly as you intended, the chance for miscommunication is high. In your own communications, ask yourself if 100% of your audience will correctly understand every acronym and bit of jargon. If the answer is “I’m not sure,” then rephrase it for clarity. Rinse and repeat.