My mom taught me this as a way to figure out my algebra homework:
If you are having trouble understanding some complicated calculation, reduce it.
Think about 2 and 3.
Two plus three. Two times three.
You already know the answers.
Five. Six.
So instead of struggling with the answer, you can think about how you got there. Understand the process with numbers small enough to hold in your head. Then move back to the bigger numbers, where you don’t know the answer.
Reduce the problem.
It took me years to realize she wasn’t teaching me only math.
I once described a fairly complicated personnel problem to a CEO. I had all the facts. The history. The grievances. What had been said to whom. What we had tried. What hadn’t worked.
He listened.
Then he reduced it.
“Sounds like the person isn’t happy.”
That was pretty much it.
“Ask him if he’s happy. And if he’s not, maybe he should go find his happiness somewhere else.”
Well. That eliminated a long explanation I was ready to offer, and, it empowered me to handle it. Cool. One conversation, one resignation. Living the dream.
Another time, an employee was making it known that he was embarrassed to work for the company. It wasn’t personal. It was about the company as a whole. He didn’t like the new direction. Didn’t like the people running it. Didn’t much like having his name associated with the place.
Again, I was prepared to discuss the nuances.
A boss reduced it for me.
“Fine. But is he so embarrassed he’ll stop taking our money every two weeks?”
There are management books that require 300 pages to get you to sentences like those.
The really good bosses I’ve known had an ability to strip away all the stuff we build around a problem and find the small problem hiding inside the big one.
Steve Jobs apparently operated on a version of the same principle.
On the decisions that really mattered, he said his senior people would get together and work the problem until they agreed. Not: I’m the CEO, do it my way.
But there was another side to that.
If, over time, somebody fundamentally wanted to take the company somewhere the rest of the leadership didn’t want to go, eventually Jobs reduced that problem, too.
You weren’t on the team anymore.
That’s important, because reducing a problem is not the same as oversimplifying one.
Complicated problems can be genuinely complicated.
People are complicated. Companies are complicated. Markets are complicated. God knows, newsrooms are complicated.
But complexity has a way of becoming camouflage.
We create committees. Studies. Meetings about meetings. Twelve-slide decks explaining why the six-slide deck failed. Everybody brings another fact, another objection, another consideration.
Sometimes all of that is necessary.
Sometimes we’re hiding from 2 plus 3.
What are we actually trying to accomplish?
Is the employee happy?
Does the customer want this?
Are we making money?
Do we believe in this strategy?
Is the person with us or against us?
What happens if we do nothing?
As I was writing this, my other parent entered my mind. Dad was very competitive and it’s very like him to want in… but… my mom was an absolute saint, and she’s going to stay in the title. All that aside, my dad would always tell the tale of a truck that was wedged into the top of an underpass. Teams were out, trying to figure a way to tow the truck out.
Then:
The young boy walked up to them and said, “have you thought about letting the air out of the tires?”
Now, to his credit, my dad told that story to make me think about problem solving, and the legend that the boy supposedly was awarded a scholarship to engineering school. I don’t know if that’s true, but, I am the oldest of nine, so it may have been a nudge to go find stuck trucks.
Reduce.
Find the smallest version of the problem whose answer you actually understand.
Then start adding the bigger numbers back.
That’s probably another place where Management and Wisdom overlap.
Management is very good at making problems bigger.
Wisdom knows when to make them small.
But Wait! There’s More!!
Reducing complexity is also a pretty good description of what we’re trying to do at Eponymos.
The Public Relations and Media sector has accumulated an extraordinary number of tools, vendors, databases, workflows and steps between having something to say and getting it in front of the people who matter.
We’re working on making that smaller, too.
If you’d like to see what we’re building, take a look at Eponymos, or reach out and we’ll happily give you a live demo.
No obligation.
You’ll find it will simplify your work week as easy as 1, 2, 3.