You know these people: add one to a team and the work at hand becomes easier. These are the Simplifiers. They create order from chaos. Conversely, add a Complexifier and the work takes on byzantine proportions. Every detail needs to be fleshed out before the work can start. Every meeting to review a project adds to it. Every email has the potential of becoming War and Peace. But before you get too harsh with the Complexifiers, let me clearly state – some of your best workers could be either. It is just that you have never thought of them in this way (until now!). Step through your department and you will see how quickly you can pick who belongs to which category!
Management is the art of picking the right ratio of Simplifiers and Complexifiers for your teams and projects. You need the Simplifiers to make those diagrams and spreadsheets readable, to keep the requirements on a project understandable and do-able, to actually get from meetings to next-steps and make sure that projects indeed get finished. But the Complexifiers are needed too. They make sure that the baby is not thrown out with the bath water, that sufficient detail is collected and considered, and that fast-and-convenient does not mean taking undue risks and overlooking real project needs.
All this is, of course, very simplistic. It is forcing a black-and-white filter on a gray world, and you know better. People come in all shades. But think of Simplifiers/Complexifiers as a management tool rather than a label to damn with. Know that for leading a team Simplifiers are often best. Recognize when to insert (or withdraw) Complexifiers when project requirements are being thrashed out. And remember that we are not talking about personality types. Your Simplifier could well be an introverted, systematic, number-crunching problem solver – or as easily a “yee-haw” seat-of-the-pants let’s-just-get-it-done extrovert who doesn’t give a hoot about numbers. The point is to have awareness of the entropic impact of a person on a team – and making the best bets with this knowledge.
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