9 Tips for Reducing Complexity in Talent Development . . . and Beyond

By Lisa Bodell 

During a series of keynotes I delivered in Europe, Asia, and the United States, it became evident that those in attendance shared a frustrating reality: Their workdays completely revolved around emails, meetings, and reports. They had no time for strategic imagination, creativity, or high-value work. And a single root cause kept surfacing: complexity.

Complexity exists in small tasks such as expense reports or email threads and extends to hiring practices, product pipelines, and communication. In complex organizations, the company’s core values have been replaced by frustration, fear, and helplessness. Operations are often hampered by policies and processes, and there’s disconnect between senior leaders and employees. From meetings and messaging to hiring and tech support, nothing happens simply or swiftly.

If any of the above sounds familiar, you’re not alone. But you’re not powerless either. While a true culture shift takes time and enterprise-wide cooperation, you can use these nine tactics to start reducing complexity around L&D, as well as in your team’s daily tasks

1. Shorten employee onboarding. Eliminate long-winded orientations by offering on-demand learning during an employee’s onboarding. Focus orientation on the basics with a brief Q&A meeting two to four weeks after the start date, when employees have a better grasp of their responsibilities.
2. Eliminate unnecessary meetings like Sprint did. After reviewing a year’s worth of meetings—from standing and weekly status meetings to events, off-sites, and team gatherings—Sprint eliminated 30 percent of them. Conduct your own meeting audit and do away with meetings that don’t add value or have outlived their original objective.
3. Encourage tweet-sized feedback loops. After completing a benchmark event or milestone, send a mini-review to participants requesting Twitter-length answers (140 characters or less) about team or initiative performance, critical skills, and advice on what should be improved next time around.
4. Institute email-free time zones. UK-based multimedia production company Ten Alps banned morning emails so employees could allocate time for ideating and imagining, rather than inboxing.
5. Eliminate (or rethink) annual performance reviews. Follow Accenture’s lead and do away with paperwork-heavy performance reviews. Instead of reserving feedback for a once-a-year exercise, managers at this professional services company now provide employees with more frequent and less formal reviews for real-time improvement. Consider linking assessment criteria to strategy so employees understand how their performance affects the business from a strategic standpoint.
6. End meetings 15 minutes before the hour. Standardize the 45-minute meeting, enabling employees to make their next meeting or call in a timely manner.
7. Host a Simplification Jam. Like IBM’s Idea Jam, which engages more than 300,000 employees around the world in far-reaching exploration and problem-solving, invite your organization (and external stakeholders such as customers or clients) to propose ideas for simplifying complex areas of your business.
8. Introduce meeting-free Wednesdays like Airbnb did to encourage uninterrupted time for valuable work.
9. Shift weekly calls to bimonthly. HBO’s division for Domestic Network Distribution modified the frequency of its weekly touch-point calls for senior leadership to bimonthly, saving time and increasing the quality of information exchanged

These helpful tips are designed to encourage simplification on a daily basis in your workplace. Promote an anti-complexity mindset by publicly rewarding employees who embrace simplicity or who propose new ways to cut the clutter. As other teams become aware of L&D approaches to general tasks, such as meetings and emails, your best practices will gain traction. Simplification translates into tangible, freed-up time, which means more daily opportunities for us all to engage in valuable work.