Tool Box
Issue No. 20 - December/January 2005
Cutting through the fog of business
by Bill Anschutz
Are you confused by the endless fads of business models, the overload of information and the compulsion of the urgent over the important? Does it seem that there is a plot to stop you from doing what you need to do?
Jack Welch, recently retired CEO of General Electric, said, “Business is Simple”!
How could a US$100 billion p.a. business be simple?
How do you simplify complexity? This question has to be the “make or break” question for any growing business.
With the accumulated academic knowledge of business and management training, why is it that we do not know the answers in advance? Why can’t we produce highly skilled competent managers and business owners who know intuitively what to do?
Business becomes simple when you know what to do. The problem is that “we do not know what we do not know” and we stumble into problems and situations that we have not imagined or encountered before. It is called “life experience”.
Academic learning is not a substitute for the learning that comes from experience. Conversely, experience alone is not a substitute for understanding business theory. Many businesses continue to stumble through new experiences and try to remember what worked.
Unfortunately the variables are never the same next time. Attempts to remember all of the solutions for all of the problems does not work and builds increasing complexity.
So how is it that a leader like Jack Welch could lead a $100 billion business and see it as “simple”?
The answer lies in understanding and capturing the values, principles, frameworks, systems and operations required to deliver the product or service to the customer. Good managers learn to think and act on progressively different levels, as their organizations grow. They work through from specific skills, organisational processes and values systems that enable their organisations to achieve higher quality with lower cost of production.
Wh...
