Lean Quote: Clarity and Simplicity

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Clarity and simplicity are the antidotes to complexity and uncertainty."   — General George Casey

Leadership clarity and simplicity in these times of dynamic uncertainty is important to build and maintain confidence and perspective in your organization.

Clarity means your team knows their objective.  They know the goal, and they know where they are heading.  Often a good leader will set these objectives collaboratively with their team, to help them to buy in to what needs to be done.  Clarity means making a plan, and knowing the steps to execute that plan.  When you have clarity on what needs to be done and how you are going to do it, there’s quite simply a much higher chance it will get done.

Simplicity means being able to reduce the steps to getting the outcome you want.  It means finding the lowest common denominator, the clearest path, the smoothest way forward.  Albert Einstein is credited with saying “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”  That means only someone who truly understands something can articulate it in simple terms – others will go on and on trying to convince everyone, including themselves.

One of the surest ways to set your team up for failure is to make tasks and initiatives overly complicated. So bring simplicity and clarity to your team – you will see their employee engagement soar and your productivity improve.