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According to Steve Jobs, “Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to think clearly and make it simple.” It seems obvious that simplicity helps an organization succeed. And yet, it’s surprisingly difficult to attain.
When simplicity is such a challenge, that you must be intentional about it. That’s why many successful firms prioritize simplicity as a price. Ikea’s give attention to simplicity is clear in its designs, its catalog, its shopping experience, and more. One of Nike’s 11 management maxims is “simplify and go,” with teams focused on adapting quickly to recent technologies and fashions.
I consider that simplicity is a driver for good innovation. In fact, my journey as an entrepreneur began with the concept of ​​simplifying a fancy and bureaucratic process. Today, the success of that concept has created recent challenges. We serve hundreds of thousands of shoppers in over 100 countries with many alternative needs – to satisfy all of them, we would want lots of different features. So we want to search out the best ideas that improve the experience for the most important variety of users.
Related: Why it is best to embrace simplicity as a method (and three ways to do it)
Simplifying innovations is a recipe for fulfillment
Some people consider that to be an entrepreneur you’ve got to create breakthrough technological innovations, but in actual fact there may be lots of room for innovation based on recent technologies, simplifying them and packaging them for specific use cases.
When you’re thinking that of two of the technology giants of our time, Google and Apple, it’s fair to say that neither invented their core technologies. Apple wasn’t the primary company to develop a house computer or a cell phone, and Google wasn’t the primary company to develop a search engine. They made existing innovations simpler and easier to make use of, and that was a recipe for fulfillment.
This is very relevant right away, within the midst of a revolution driven by generative AI. There are definitely tremendous opportunities in developing recent AI-driven technologies, but there are much more opportunities find ways to package these technologies into user-friendly software for specific use cases.
To do that, you need to first master the technology after which put yourself within the shoes of your potential user. Try to grasp what is basically useful concerning the innovation and what obstacles people might need to beat when using it.
The secret is to search out a strategy to simplify the technology in order that it is less complicated in your goal users to grasp and use. If you do this, you’ve got a winner.
Work smarter by simplifying communication
Another aspect of any business where simplification is amazingly necessary is communication and processes. As firms grow, it becomes tougher to get everyone on the identical page or ensure continuity between departments. Poor communication results in misunderstandings, which in turn can result in mistakes. The more people involved in a project, the more likely it’s that workflows will change into more complicated. All of this slows things down, wastes time, and limits your ability to influence the business.
Let’s start with communication. Using consistent, easy language across the corporate is crucial to helping people understand one another. For example, try to make use of less technical jargon and fewer three-letter acronyms, or explain them while you do. By creating organized archives of historical documents and plans, you will make it easier to onboard recent employees, and everybody will give you the chance to search out necessary information quickly after they need it.
Create a culture of transparency where different departments share their plans with one another. Create frameworks to facilitate this, equivalent to quarterly reviews or providing roadmaps. Employees cannot actively take part in every little thing that happens in the corporate, but by helping everyone participate passively, you be certain that everyone seems to be on the identical page and may encourage ideas and collaboration between teams.
When that you must communicate, encourage your teams to accomplish that as directly as possible. By simplifying communication and making it easy to grasp, discussions are more focused and decisions are made faster.
Related topics: The key to effectively communicating necessary messages is simplicity
Put simplicity at the guts of your product
A simplification mindset may also be applied to product development. By making small incremental changes, sometimes with test groups of users, you need to use the “inspect and adapt” method to grasp their acceptance and any problems and proceed to innovate accordingly. From time to time, you may mix all of those small changes into one big product update that you just roll out to everyone.
Example: An organization added significant value to its product through recent features and versions. In theory, this was great for users, but some found the interface overwhelming and the brand new pricing options confusing. To use a metaphor, some persons are comfortable to be given ingredients for their very own meal, but most would like the chef to do the cooking so that they can benefit from the final result.
After understanding this through their feedback, the corporate introduced a change to its interface that helped users achieve the specified final result without having to work hard for it themselves. By simplifying it, the corporate maximized the impact of the worth of all the brand new additions to the product.
Related: Keep It Simple: Why Simplicity Is Key to Your Brand’s Success
Richard Branson once said, “Any fool can make something complicated. It’s hard to keep things simple.” Simplicity doesn’t occur by accident – you’ve got to be intentional about it. You must make it clear and the main target for the entire company. You must put it at the middle of every little thing. And should you succeed, the impact shall be enormous.
