Flexibility is key to success

While on vacation this summer I listened to my wife and started each day with more stretching. On the floor each morning I reminded my muscles that they have been spending too muchtime in an office chair. Stretching hamstrings and hip flexors before I windsurfed and kayaked and swam and jumped off the rocks with my kids made me feel younger and stronger. It also brought tightness I hadn’t had in my legs since high school sports. But I am slowly feeling stronger and more agile. And the hurt is the good kind.

Flexibility is the key to success in business today. The Internet gave consumers flexibility of when and where they find information. IT infrastructure gives companies, of all sizes, the flexibility to transact business from any location. Software services have given us the flexibility to scale that technology backend without the cost exorbidence of previous business models. Companies can no longer just “throw bodies” at projects. Large companies have realized that the game has changed and flexibility is key to their success.

Fortune magazine dug into the problems in a recent article entitled “Tearing up the Jack Welch Playbook.” By making fixed costs more variable (ie outsourcing, partnering, and focusing on core strengths), corporate success stories now come from agile companies with streamlined business models that do not require scale but with technology that can (Fortune article)

Software tools that allow instant publishing of opinions, news and information are totally changing the political landscape. Politicians are abusing the flexibility of this new medium by editing their opponents pages as well as enhancing their own (Charlotte Observer article) as covered in this recent article. Flexibility is not a license to cheat however and those indiscretions had to be monitored and made less flexible (try editing President Bush’s wiki entry for instance).

Apply flexibility to your business life. Get down on the floor and stretch. Get your employees and co-workers and clients to do it with you. Try to gain back some of the mobility you had when you were younger. Use it as you go about business today. It may bring a little tightness tomorrow, but you will start to see the results almost immediately in other aspects of strength and agility.

Simple is the new More….

Have you seen the new IBM marketing campaign? Simple Drive-through Whole page spreads in national newsprint. Outstanding creative behind a classic American brand. And the message? SIMPLE - from a company with more complex solutions than most of us can imagine.

SIMPLE is not new. It is common sense. And it has been around since the beginning of business. Peter Drucker wrote about Simple in the 1950’s. I listened to Bill Jenson (Simplicity - The New Competitive Advantage ) at a Fast Company Real Time conference. His whole approach seemed right about stripping away the complex to focus on what was important in business - any business. Clarity of purpose is Simple. Very hard - but Simple nonetheless.

Simple is stripping away the old (200 channels and nothing on) with personalized info (Tivo). Simple is not spending 2 years writing requirements for an application, but using faster tools and processes to deliver an application that just does one thing well (iPod, Palm, Basecamp, Blinksale examples). Simple is applying the right people to a task and focusing only on core competencies. For individuals and companies alike.

In today’s web development world, simple is more like the Hollywood movie studio model. Bring in the best talent for lighting, editing, acting etc. and then release them when project is done. Simplify down to what you do well and focus on it. Common sense.

In Jack Trout’s book The Power of Simplicity , he quotes Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. as the CEO of General Motors in 1944 telling Peter Drucker to only put down “what you think is right” in his consulting report on the great company. Simple guidance for any consultant. We should all strive for this simple target.

“Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson