By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to add more clarity to your problem solving. Read time: 2:49.

The minister announced that his sermon on this Sunday morning would be “childishly, simple.” He paused and then added very seriously: “I really worked at it to make it that simple.”

Leaders work very hard to make complex ideas THAT simple. They maintain the richness of the context without dumbing down the content. Those simple-minding leaders are anything but simple-minded.

They enrich themselves and others with the same train of thought that billionaire Warren Buffett rides in leading investment strategy. “Successful investing is simple but not easy,” Buffett says.

So too, is successful leading: It’s simple but not easy.

In fact in takes great courage and confidence to be simple, according to Jack Welch, the former chairman of the General Electric Company.

“You can’t believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple,” Welch says. “They worry that if they’re simple, people will think they’re simple-minded. In reality, of course, it’s just the reverse. Clear tough-minded people are the most simple.”

Yet insecure managers hide behind complexity. They snow you with a blizzard of paperwork; they flood you with deluge of information. It’s a movie that Welch has seen too many times. Call it the Complex Cinema where “frightened nervous managers use thick, convoluted planning books and busy slides filled with everything they‘ve known since childhood.” Continue reading “Productivity: Making It Simple Not Simpler” →