By Shep Hyken
This is the third article this year about the concept of simplicity. Why? It apparently resonates with our subscribers, as there have been many comments and emails. Consider these quotes:
It was either Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Pascal, Cicero, or some other famous smart person who said, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
Einstein said, “Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex.”
What else can I add to this concept? The same day the last article came out in The Shepard Letter, I was asked to complete some “paperwork.” Once again, I had to fill in duplicate information on each form. What a waste of time! And to add some fuel to this fire, the forms were online, which doesn’t really make it paperwork. How can “they” not figure out how to take the information I type on the first page of the paperwork and add it to the appropriate fields throughout the rest of the paperwork? (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way!)
And to top it all off, one of my “best friends” in my writing projects, Grammarly, the software program that checks my work for grammar, made a suggestion for my concept of simplicity. I’ve been writing and saying this for years: Make the complicated simple. That’s four words. It seems pretty … simple. But, Grammarly called me out and suggested that I simplify that to: Simplify the complicated.
We just took four words and made it three! We just reduced the “paperwork” by 25%!
This reminds me of something one of my favorite philosophers, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, shared in an Inc. Magazine interview. He talked about how he obsesses over every word when writing a joke. “You are always trying to trim everything down to absolute rock, solid rock,” said Seinfeld. “I will sit there for 15 minutes to make it one syllable shorter.”
So, I’m giving you an important assignment. Take a walk in your customers’ shoes and experience everything they go through. Take time to actually go through the process rather than look at it on paper or a whiteboard. Depending on the type of business you have, you can pick up the phone and call customer support, go through your online checkout process, experience what it takes to become a new customer, and fill out the “paperwork” your customers must complete – the word paperwork being a metaphor for anything your customer must do when doing business with you.
And while you’re at it, do the same for your employees. What unnecessary or complicated paperwork – again, a metaphor – do they go through that wastes their time and makes them less productive?
In short – about as short as it can be – simplify the complicated!
