The Project Book

CHAPTER 58 SIMPLE IS BETTER

In his book The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey discusses a poll of 23 000 staff from multiple companies and industries. One of the most surprising statistics to emerge was that only 37 per cent of respondents said they had a clear understanding of what the organisation was trying to achieve and why.

That’s right, only a little over a third of staff knew what they were working towards!

In a 2015 report, Deloitte found that 75 per cent of organisations said their organisations were too complex but, more surprisingly, only 50 per cent of them were doing anything about it.

When I first started work (for a bank in the UK) in 1987, my then boss told me the two hardest challenges were going to be learning how to use the machinery (huge Burroughs cheque-sorting terminals) and understanding the language that was used. I mastered those Burroughs terminals in the first week, but I’m not sure I ever got my head around the language. It was something I’d experience at every organisation I worked for. Upon arrival I’d be given a set of HR policies to read and a copy of the acronym dictionary — it was actually called that, and I needed it to interpret the HR policies.

When organisations do this it’s a clear statement that they — and their leaders — haven’t taken the time to remove the complexity from the working language and have allowed acronyms and jargon to multiply like rabbits.

Like so much in leadership, keeping your language simple is a choice you make every day. ...