Smart Simplicity

Expanding regulations, new technologies, and rising customer expectations are just some of the complexities that organizations confront. Historically, companies have responded to such external requirements and challenges by increasing their internal complicatedness, which BCG defines as the number of procedures, vertical layers, interface structures, coordination bodies, decision approvals, and other add-ons.

Complicatedness results in many performance issues, such as high costs, slow decision-making, siloed thinking, a lack of innovation, and difficulty getting things done—all common concerns of CEOs today. While complexity is a fact of business life, complicatedness doesn’t have to be.

What Is Smart Simplicity?

Smart Simplicity helps organizations identify and resolve unnecessary complicatedness and deliver lasting, measurable change. How does a Smart Simplicity approach differ from traditional solutions? We take into consideration the drivers of behavior—the context that employees work within—and then shape this context to achieve the desired behaviors.

A Holistic Framework for Smart Simplicity

1. Smart Start. We start by conducting our Complicatedness Survey to pinpoint symptoms of complicatedness across eight key dimensions and identify pain points that are hindering performance in your organization
2. Diagnosis. Using Smart Simplicity’s proven diagnostic tools, deep-dive employee interviews, and behavioral science, we identify the root causes of complicatedness and establish the link between context and behavior. We then determine how changes to the context will make new behaviors rational—and thereby improve performance.
3. Solution. Finally, we apply six simple rules for overcoming complexity, a set of Smart Simplicity strategies that are based on economics, game theory, and organizational sociology.
4. Implementation. To ensure that change is happening, we provide an implementation roadmap and embed Smart Simplicity thinking within the organization.