A Key Ingredient of Scale

I went to a demo of a customized software build out recently that was pretty impressive.

It was built on AirTable (a tool I’ve grown to love) and could do everything from project management to generating (and sending) beautiful reports to customers.

I was impressed.

So I spent some time under the hood looking at how it all worked…

And more importantly, the operational challenges it was designed to solve.

As cool as it was, I made the recommendation to pass.

As I like to say, it was over-engineered. The demo was cool, yet experience tells me reality would be way less fun.

Here’s the big mistake…

When faced with a complicated problem, avoid creating a complicated solution.

I see too many businesses wind up with over-complicated systems. The assumption deep down is that as a business grows it gets bigger. And bigger things are more complicated. And complicated problems require complex solutions.

I believe it’s the opposite.

Your business should evolve towards simplicity and away from complexity.

It makes you more scalable. More reliable and resilient.

And it prevents you from being beholden to the “master operator,” the only one in your business who can decipher how everything works.

That last one is the problem I see too often…

Equipped with tools project management & automation tools, well-meaning operators build and build and build.

Eventually, the operator is the only one who can understand and operate the systems in the business. Everything depends on them.

Worse yet, bottlenecks become difficult to find and fix. And problems usually result in adding even more complexity.

And that’s the problem I saw coming when I watched the fancy AirTable demo with all the automations, notifications, reports, and more.

The solution: simplicity.

It took some time, but I went back to the drawing board and redesigned processes, roles, and deliverables until things worked smoothly and simply.

The team LOVES it. They’re working better. We can see the path towards scaling now.

All because we said NO to complexity, and did the hard work to create simplicity.

Be willing to step back and look at the complete system and simplify everything. Challenge your assumptions.

And be patient. Simplicity takes time.

And if you want some help – reply to this video and tell me about a challenge you’re facing.