As you receive this, I’m in Ghana. As someone who flies quite a bit, quite often internationally, I am continually amazed at the differing ways countries deal with security.  This starts with the process of figuring out if you need a visa in advance or can just drop in when you’d like. 

My last note to you, Loosen Up, was about the way giving some control and autonomy over the way things are done leads to better results. Airline travel today, most especially in the United States, is an exercise in showing how lack of any autonomy leads to the exact opposite…and with a huge amount of wasted effort and expense not to mention angry citizens who all recognize the stupidity of forcing pat-downs of young children because their number happened to randomly pop up.

Planning for the trip got me thinking about how control so often has the effect of adding complexity.  And complexity so often leads to loopholes that lead to results far different from those envisioned.  Our legislative process here in the US is probably the best example of this.  Do they actually think a 2800 page law does anything but lead to myriad ways to evade its intent for those clever enough, while penalizing those with less resources…or fewer attorneys.

I see companies every day that have forgotten this.  They worship complexity…at least until I get them thinking about the virtues of simplicity. In spite of what legislators and so many executives think, you can’t control everything.  You can’t plan in great detail for everything that might occur.  The world is often random and no matter how you plan or draft volumes of rules and regualtions, it throws something at you, you never thought of.

Find the right people, people who believe in what you do and have the right skills.  Give them the broad goals and prescribe only as much as is required for consistency and quality.  Give them the right tools and training. Allow them to fill in the rest. Allow them to think. Give up some control and complexity in favor of simplicity and autonomy…and watch results improve.

Keep it simple.  Stop traumatizing the children…and the rest of us.

 

 

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