The Complicator

I was talking with a client the other day who told me she had passed the “How to do more with less” stage and was now considering “How to do less with less.”

This broke my heart.

I know for sure that doing less will see them go backwards and having to catch up in the future at much greater expense.

I asked,
“What if you could keep doing everything you want to do with less?”

Most organisations actually have a lot of capacity trapped — invisible — waiting to get out and be useful. Depending on which study you look at, it’s estimated that between 10–50% of what people do in their jobs is not adding value. That’s not an effort or people problem - it’s a system problem.

And it’s a lot of potential capacity to play with if we unlock it.

After a quick discussion, we discovered that, like many organisations, they had a Complicator or two hanging around. If you can spot and eliminate Complicators, you will very likely find some capacity you didn’t realise you had.

So what’s a Complicator? Let me explain.

—

Once upon a time in an organisation (not too) far, far away, a project was underway. Or at least it was trying to be.

It was one of those Big Projects.
Lots of ambition.
Lots of dollars ending in lots of zeroes.
Lots of years to get it done.

It was still early days.

There was also Lots of Interest. Lots of Needing to be Included. Lots of Wanting to Know. And, of course, lots and lots and lots of Reporting Up to make sure Important People were Informed.

—

Three months in, it nearly broke me.

In a single day I was asked to update seven different reports about the Big Project.

Yes. Seven.

That’s a lot of reports in anyone’s book.

Given it was early days in a ten-year project, there wasn’t much significant to update — the last reports had been issued only two weeks earlier.

Why were the next ones needed so soon?

To give Other People time to check them, get them to the Boss Person in time to read them before the Right Meetings.
(This would take two weeks, apparently.)

It turned out five of the seven reports would all end up on the Boss Person’s desk.

Yes — you read that right.

Five of the seven going to the same person.

Why so many reports all updating the same Big Project?

There were Lots of Important People who wanted answers from the Boss Person (to questions that hadn’t even been considered yet).

Lots of other Very Busy People wanted to put something in a report to show they were On Top of Things.

Still more Interested Parties wanted to Keep Abreast of Things in case This Thing became The Thing and they should Be Involved.
(Or, in case This Thing became That Thing and they needed to Distance Themselves.)

Still others wanted to crowbar the Big Project into their Strategic Priorities to show Something Was Happening.

I needed tea.

—

Tea turned out to be a mistake.

In the kitchen, I ran into the Finance Guy.

He wanted an update.

Not a report. No, he just wanted an update on the Justification to have the Project Money released into the Project Budget.

I was confused. Very confused.

We’d already done the Business Case and got approval from the Big Cheese. The Big Cheese had said Yes.

Turns out the Yes was not a yes and was, in fact, a Maybe. Or maybe a Possibly. Or possibly a No — depending on what had changed since the Yes.

The Big Project had to be justified all over again.

To do that, the Finance Guy would need answers for the Boss Person and the Big Cheese.

You guessed it — answers to questions that hadn’t even been considered yet. And wouldn’t be for a while yet.

Was this Big Project still a Strategic Priority, I asked?

Yes. Or maybe Possibly?

My head hurt.

Would tea — my constant companion to all life’s challenges — be enough?

It was.

It was enough to create a pause. It was enough for me to seek some counsel on the best way through. (As opposed to the tempting — and, in the circumstances, understandable but seldom successful — Toss the Toys strategy.)

Counsel thankfully arrived in the form of a Wise Old Hand.

“Ah,” she said, pouring the tea. “Yes. We like to put things through The Complicator around here. Sometimes we put it through twice just to make sure.”

“But putting it through seven times is a bit much even for us. Let’s see what can be done.”

It was time to get a few heads together and come up with a different approach. It turned out I was not the only one debating the Toss the Toys strategy.

I’m glad to report (!) that together we found a way to, if not altogether eliminate, then moderate The Complicator.

The reporting was reduced to once a month. One Master Report. The one source of truth for Important People Wanting to Know, or Needing to Be Included, or Keeping Abreast of Things.

The Justification was extracted from the Business Case (yep — it was there all along) and passed through The Complicator without fuss or unnecessary rework.

As for providing answers to the questions that hadn’t been answered yet — that is for another day.

—

Thanks go to the Wise Old Hand who alerted me to the presence of The Complicator, and to those who put their heads together to find a way through.

I close with a simple plea.

If you spot a Complicator — please do not perpetuate it.
It will take bravery, some allies, and a Wise Old Hand by your side.

And very probably a cup of tea.

—

The self-operating napkin

PS
If you are a designer and/or proponent of the Complicator and feel I am missing the point of it, I encourage you to put your talents to use in the annual Rube Goldberg Machine competitions, where contestants are asked to create a machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and (impractically) overly complicated way.

The design of a Rube Goldberg ‘machine’ is often presented on paper and would be impossible to implement in actuality.

[Link] https://www.rubegoldberg.org/all-about-rube/a-cultural-icon/