Moment 159. Want to Outperform? Then Keep It Simple!

Welcome to the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more. Access to the experience of a successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host Martin Moore who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence. Welcome to Moments with Marty, your short, sharp shot of leadership insight to help you to stay on track between our weekly episodes of the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast. We're constantly being asked to do more with less. Many leaders think that their job is to make the team more productive by getting to do more stuff. I know I used to. To take on another side project or to implement an improvement suggested by a customer. To say yes to every idea that comes down from above, or even just asking the team to deliver something knowing that they have insufficient resources. Now don't get me wrong, constraining resources is a powerful technique for enhancing capital efficiency. The system replacement that I led at National Transport Insurance many years ago was a great example of stretching capital further than should have been possible. If we take an additional approach with tier one business partners and software, the project would have commanded a price tag of around 20 to 30 million. Instead we delivered it for just over 12 million. But I digress. What I learned from my executive experiences in multiple industries was that in most companies the link between value and activity is pretty loose. I saw so much hard work come to absolutely nothing because how the value would be captured was entirely unclear. I learned the secret to real value delivery, creating a culture of simplicity and focus. Instead of constantly trying to do more things I started to remove the distractions and focus my people only on the things that drove real value. This required a completely different way of thinking. So I developed language to help my people understand where to concentrate their efforts. I would frequently say, I only want you to focus on the biggest ticket items. Don't get distracted by all the other shit that doesn't move the needle. I'd rather you just take one high value task and absolutely nail it than to muck around with 10 things that are of questionable value. If you take on too much, you'll end up doing everything half-assed and it'll just distract you from the stuff that really matters. Instead of constantly asking your people to take on more, you should be focusing them on what they can stop doing. You won't ever get real traction until you can work out how to eliminate the noise and focus on the things that make the most difference. Here are my top five tips for creating a culture of simplicity and focus. Tip number one, set a very small number of very high value goals. Every new piece of work your team takes on distracts and diffuses their focus. If you do the heavy lifting in the annual planning phase and remove the low value activity, you'll find it much easier to maintain the focus and protect the highest value deliverables. Tip number two, only talk about value. Don't reward people for toiling endlessly on low value work. The worst thing you can do is to reinforce a culture where your resident worker Hollick wears his effort like a badge of honor. Talk only about value, whether you're assigning work or giving kudos to people for achieving successful outcomes. Tip number three, free your people up from the grind. It's incredibly difficult to stop work once it started. People become emotionally attached to it. To achieve simplicity and focus, you have to hunt down low value work and kill it. Every day you should be asking your people, what tasks can you drop? How can I help you to clear your desk? Tip number four, your people should be working hard and smart. The advice to work smart and not harder is sound, but it's not entirely accurate. Why is that? Well, because the best teams do both. Once you focus your people on the right things, they need to generate momentum. Working harder isn't about more hours either. It's about relentless focus on achieving the agreed outcomes. And finally, tip number five, maximise transparency in reporting. With fewer objectives, it's easier to track progress. If you want a clear line of sight to the work, you have to measure and assess progress frequently. So a good one-on-one meeting cadence is going to help you see clearly what's happening, keep your people on track and kill any low value work before it drags them down. Creating a culture where less is best feels counterintuitive, but the discipline of simplicity and focus will lift your team's performance more than you could possibly imagine. If you want to take a deeper dive into how you can help your team to get great attraction, have a listen to episode 67 of the No Bullshit Leadership Podcast, Simplicity and Focus. We'll leave a link in the show notes. I really hope you enjoyed this moment and that it gives you that extra little spark to be a No Bullshit Leader.