Ron Sidman has spent most of his adult life in the juvenile products industry. Motivated by his interest in parenting and child development, he created the parenting lifestyle oriented brand, The First Years, and was Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer until the company was sold in September of 2004 to the RC2 Corporation for $162 million. Ron is now acting as a business consultant to industry CEO’s through JPMA’s CEO Mentor Program, and executive blog, the CEO Play Yard.

In an effort to make improvements to our businesses and our products, we often end up making them more complex. But that complexity can be a major obstacle to success. It pays to work hard to make things as simple as possible.

Successful leader-managers recognize the enormous value of simplicity. The human brain is not designed to store or analyze large amounts of information quickly. And for you, your customers, and your employees, complexity leads to confusion, frustration, and inaction as well as inefficiency.

Unfortunately, making things simple is not easy. It’s contrary to human nature. What is easy is adding stuff—long mission statements that promise all things to all people and destroy focus, vague and all-inclusive job descriptions, more features on products than customers would ever use, more product offerings than customers could ever want, more steps in processes than are really necessary, pricing schedules too convoluted for customers and employees to understand, (and more examples of complexity than a blog reader needs to see--sorry).

So, what can you do to keep things simple and focused? As always it starts at the top of the hierarchy.

1. Make simplicity a company core value and live it.

I’m a firm believer in the “top to bottom” principle. If you want everyone in your company to behave in a certain way, you have to set the example first. Unless you have the self-discipline to be clear and simple in your communication and decision-making, no one else will either. Explain to everyone what the benefits are and then set the pace. You’ve got to stick with it too over the long haul.

2. Work hard to make your mission and vision clear, simple, and focused.

If your company’s mission statement is fuzzy and too broad, it won’t be able to do what a good mission statement does which is both to act as a source of motivation and define the boundaries within which the company will operate. Please don’t make the mistake of treating the mission statement as something unimportant or letting it be forgotten. You can’t be all things to all people. The clearer you are as to, what value you are going to provide, to what customer segment, and with, what sustainable competitive advantage, the clearer you and your staff will be about what needs to be done to grow the company.

Be ruthless when it comes to simplicity of product design. The temptation is to simply add more and more features to a product in a vain effort to make it more appealing to customers. It’s the easy way out. But, one great feature trumps 10 marginal ones. And the product will cost less, will have fewer things that can go wrong, and will be easier to explain to consumers. Instead of adding multiple marginal features to try to unseat a competitor, work to come up with one great innovation.

4. Limit the number of company and individual objectives.

Whatever system you use for strategic planning, limit the number of corporate objectives you are working on to no more than 5 and preferably fewer. The same applies to the objectives that trickle down to individuals. People just can’t juggle more than 5 major projects at one time and 3 is even better. If you have quantitative measures for each objective, limit those similarly. We all know the Pareto 80/20 principle but often forget to live it. There are perfectionist tendencies in many top performers that push them to try to do too much. What you can gain in work quality, output, and job satisfaction by focusing on the “vital few” is enormous.

5. Use technology to simplify not complicate.

If your new IT systems are not simplifying processes, than someone is missing the point. Just like there’s a tendency to add too many features to new products, there’s a tendency to add too many bells and whistles to new systems. Doesn’t do you any good if only a few people in your company can understand how to use the darn thing.

6. Look at every communication from the point of view of the recipient.

There are ways to communicate that cause misinterpretation and confusion and there are ways that result in clarity of understanding. There are information formats that are organized and easy to understand and other formats that are intimidating. We also all have a tendency to assume the recipient knows what we know when that’s not the case so we tend to leave out crucial bits. Establishing standard formats and lexicons for common communications like procedures can be very helpful. But you’ll probably benefit from investing in some basic communication training for everyone in the company. Imagine how many mistakes can be prevented.

7. Be a people and property minimalist.

Maintaining a culture of frugality is a great way to drive simplification. Live within your means. Don’t add anything—people or property—until you absolutely have to. And while some people will wince at the thought, there’s a time that a shrub needs to be pruned to encourage new growth. This certainly applies to unprofitable products and customers and no longer necessary processes or process steps. But it also applies to people at times as well. Just make sure that you treat people in that situation the way you would like to be treated if you were in their shoes. Also, don’t expect your employees to behave in a frugal manner if you drive to work in a Ferrari.

8. Evolve your company in small steps.

You should absolutely be bold and relentless in coming up with new ways to improve your company and add more value for customers. But you can test new initiatives on a small scale before committing to implementation and you can stage the implementation so it isn’t overwhelming. Also, be as transparent as you can with change so people know what’s happening and why.

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