Turkish Olympic shooter Yusuf Dekic reminds me of a common problem in management.
So many of us overcomplicate things, because of sophistication bias…
This is when we ignore simple solutions in search of something more complex, innovative or clever.
As a result, we – wrongly – rule out more practical solutions, because we deem them too simple to be helpful.
This can be a big problem. Complicated solutions often:
- Take more time and money to develop
- Are prone to more complicated and harder to fix bugs
- Aren’t any more effective than their simple alternatives
This is especially true of strategic planning.
I was guilty of it myself earlier in my career: developing convoluted and detailed strategic plans that took forever to develop and were laborious to implement.
In the end, they less effective and way more painful.
As Jack Welch said, “strategy is actually very straightforward… you pick a general direction and implement it like a hell!”.
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