Management Savvy . . .

Ambition . . .

Leadership . . .People Skills . . .

Vision . . .

Focus . . .

Determination . . .Execution . . .

Time Management . . .

Collaboration . . .

SIMPLICITY

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COPYRIG

HTED M

ATERIAL

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CHAPTER 1

Simplicity:The Foundation

of Leadership

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Plain question and plain answer make the shortestroad out of most perplexities.

—Mark Twain

As a manager, you live in a complex, fast-movingworld. Every day you set goals, assign tasks to em-

ployees, formulate budgets, and prepare reports andreviews. You look for ways to cut costs. You hire, fire,promote, or transfer your staff members. You attendto your customers who need service. New competi-tors arise; they develop new products and services.All the while the economy and the business environ-ment keep changing at an increasingly rapid pace,and technology seems to redefine itself overnight.Tons of information comes at you at lightening speed,making it increasingly difficult to make decisions.Complexity increases exponentially. Getting anythingdone often seems impossible.

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Management Savvy . . .

Ambition . . .

Leadership . . .People Skills . . .

Vision . . .

Focus . . .

Determination . . .Execution . . .

Time Management . . .

Collaboration . . .

SIMPLICITY

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One of the ways great business leaders differenti-ate themselves is by cutting through all that “noise”and boiling things down to a simple statement, vision,or direction. It isn’t easy. To find an all-encompassing,easy-to-understand statement requires clarity ofthought and brings into play the balance between theright brain and the left. It starts with rigorous logic inthe left side of the brain and then draws on intuitionfrom the right side to weed out extraneous thoughtsand keep crucial ideas. Most of us have often thought:“If I had had more time, I would have written a shorterletter.”

“Google” the classic quote on page 15 and you’llsee it attributed to everyone from Mark Twain toEinstein. Blaise Pascal actually said it first. But itdoesn’t matter who said it. That simple statement in it-self captures one of the key characteristics of simplic-ity—achieving it isn’t simple. It actually takes longerto write a short, concise, “to-the-point” letter than ittakes to get all your points across in a rambling, unfo-cused monologue. Similarly, it’s more difficult to for-mulate a concise and convincing vision and strategyfor a business or public venture than to prepare a 100-page report that explains every issue implication. Sim-ple is powerful because it keeps us focused and ontrack; it’s easy to communicate and it’s easy to mea-sure. That’s why Tom and Arnold both base their lead-ership philosophy on simplicity.

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THE PURPLE PROMISE

Ask any FedEx employee what his or her job is, andthe response is likely to be an instant recitation ofThe Purple Promise: “I will make every FedEx experi-ence outstanding.” The details may differ dependingon whether you’re talking to a pilot, a courier, or asorting facility manager, but the simple objective isuniversally understood by FedEx employees any-where in the world. It is an example of boiling perfor-mance down to its essence and giving everyone theability to focus on what is important. But make nomistake: behind that simplicity are incredibly com-plex systems and processes that underlie the thou-sands of planes, trucks, and packages making theirway to their individual destinations.

Think about the complexity of your own situationas a manager. You have goals that have to beachieved, people you need to lead, job descriptions towrite, processes to put in place, systems to monitor,and deadlines to meet. But what are the common de-nominators within all this complexity? What is thekey focus area for you and your team? What is theessence of your job? Try to formulate this into a sim-ple statement that applies to everyone on your team.Then start communicating that simple statement toeveryone in the organization, from your boss rightdown to your newest hire. You will be surprised how

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The Purple Promise

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focused people will become, how willing to workhard on what matters, and how willing they will be toweed out what does not contribute to their team’skey focus.

Once you simplify your own job, you need to be-come an evangelist for simplification among your em-ployees. When a team member comes to you with along story about how her project is in jeopardy be-cause people are not cooperating with her and “that’swhat’s causing this problem here and that problemthere,” stop her. Tell her you’re interested in her prob-lem and want to help, but you both need to get to thereal problem. Encourage her to go back to her officeand take the time to distill the issue to a simple state-ment with no more than three main bullet points.That clarity of thought will help both of you focusyour efforts on finding a productive solution, ratherthan flailing away at the complexity of it all.

As a manager you aren’t flying solo. Your job is toget other people to do the things they need to do tohelp your company reach its goals. Thus, it’s impor-tant for you to be able to communicate to your teamas to what they’re supposed to be doing, and howand why they’re supposed to be doing it. This iswhere simplicity really begins to pay dividends. Ifyou have clarity of thinking and can reduce yourbusiness goals and problems into simple, easy-to-un-derstand statements, your ability to communicate will

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be much more powerful than someone whose ideasget lost in the details. We’ve all heard the wondrousclarity that disguised deep complexity when Presi-dent John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural speech, urgedAmericans to, “Ask not what your country can do foryou—ask what you can do for your country.”

When you think about it, the path to leadershipreally is simple: clarity of thought leads to simplicity,which leads to focus and powerful communicationand that’s the essence of leadership. Procter andGamble, one of the world’s most successful com-panies in the competitive field of consumer products,understands the power of simplicity. It’s in a toughbusiness, one in which customers in different parts ofthe globe have different tastes. To make it more com-plicated, all those different customers’ tastes arechanging all the time. Procter and Gamble’s productshave to perform, so it is a given that the chemistryand technology behind them have to be right. Butthey also have to be marketable, with the right pack-aging and marketing and at the right price to sell involume while returning a profit. That’s a pretty com-plex challenge. Yet every single proposal, every inter-nal idea at Procter & Gamble, is distilled into aone-page memo. That’s the only way it makes therounds. That’s about as simple as you can imagineand stands in sharp contrast to the typical companythat produces a 200-page business case with an ap-pendix as a starting point of a conversation.

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McKinsey & Company, one of the most respectedconsulting firms in the world, has a different, althoughequally powerful, approach to simplicity. At McKinseyyou hear over and over again that good things come inthrees. There aren’t 10 root causes for a problem orfive ways to improve performance. Three is the magicnumber. McKinsey’s “threes” approach to simplicityputs a strong emphasis on getting down to the essen-tials, the three critical things that matter.

FOCUSING THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Both Tom and Arnold serve on the Memphis RegionalChamber of Commerce. Anyone who is familiar withchambers of commerce knows that they are engagedin a myriad of activities. The Memphis Chamber wasno different and both Tom and Arnold could see thatthis Chamber lacked a focus. Ask 20 different peoplewhat the Chamber was all about and you’d get 20 dif-ferent answers. There was a reason for that. With thebest of intentions, Chamber executives and boardmembers took on many causes, ranging from federallegislation support to local zoning issues, from mini-mum wage debates to park access roads. There wasnothing simple about their agenda. But the result ofspreading themselves too thin was this: while theChamber was involved in many things, it was ineffec-tive in most.

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To work effectively and to get its message acrossthe Chamber needed focus. Using the same approachthey had used in other complex projects, Tom andArnold put their heads together to find the orga-nization’s core objectives. The result: economic de-velopment and community building emerged as theChamber’s raison d’etre. From those two core objec-tives, Tom and Arnold were able to distill 10 key

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initiatives that supported the two objectives. Toensure that everyone in Memphis understood theseobjectives and initiatives, the Chamber producedlaminated cards—one side showed at the top the eco-nomic development objective and the core initiativesand goals that supported that objective, and the otherside showed the community-building objective andthe key initiatives behind this. Today, when-ever a new idea or initiative is brought to the Cham-ber, someone is likely to pull out the card to see ifthe suggestion has a place on it. Thus the card fo-cuses everyone—the board, Chamber leadership, andeven the media and public—on the Chamber’s coremission.

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