Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated

New tools for managing complexity. Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group’s Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years, while organizational complicatedness—the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems—has increased by a factor of thirty-five. In attempting to respond to increasingly complex performance requirements, company leaders have created an organizational labyrinth that makes it harder to improve productivity and pursue innovation, and it can disengage and demotivate the workforce. Clearly it’s time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with traditional tools and instead better leverage employees’ intelligence. This book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leading organizations. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociology) and The Boston Consulting Group’s work with more than five hundred companies in more than forty countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated. Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman give managers a much-needed tool to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless complexity. Included are detailed examples from companies that have achieved a multiplicative effect on performance by using them. It’s time to manage complexity better. Employ these six simple rules to foster autonomy and cooperation and to effectively handle business complexity. As a result, you will improve productivity, innovate more, reengage your workforce, and seize opportunities to create competitive advantage.