The Simple-Minded Manager^SM:
Cutting Through the Chaos

From The Simple-Minded Manager, Cutting Through Your Work-Life Chaos

We live in challenging times. There are so many demands, so many choices. We struggle to fit everything into our busy yet divided lives. Sometimes we feel like we're on a perpetual treadmill -- working harder and harder but going nowhere ... fast!

I remember a discussion I had with an old boss. He was telling me how hard he worked, and how much he needed a break. I countered by telling him how hard I was working. Surely, I worked harder and was more stressed than he.

We went back and forth, each growing more red-faced. Then suddenly, I stopped. Why was I competing with my boss? Here I was entering this contest, trying to determine who worked more. But who cared? Somehow I had fallen into the all-too-common trap of thinking that my value as a person rested on how hard I worked or how stressed I was.

We work in a global, interconnected, complicated -- and 24-hour -- economy. Technology only adds to the burden. E-mails, Faxes, Cell phones, Beepers intruding constantly into our lives. We are caught in the shuffle of being better, faster, and cheaper than the competition.

It just never stops.

A young man named William found the solution to all this. William was born in a little town near London. He entered into the Franciscan Order at an early age and studied math and logic. Later, William took a traditional course of studies at Oxford University, and began to write and lecture on his ideas. Unfortunately, William's opinions so offended the faculty at Oxford that he left the University without completing his Masters Degree. William constantly challenged the authority of those who dogmatically held to complex and confusing organizational theories. William believed in simplicity as a way of cutting through all the confusion and making sense of it all.

William cut through all of this complexity with one simple phrase... Frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest per pauciora

A rough translation of William's idea is, "the simplest of theories is preferable" or "the simpler the explanation, the closer to the truth".

I should probably tell you that William was born in the year 1285. The little town near London was called Ockham. William used this simple logic so effectively to cut through the confusing theories of the day, the idea became known as "Ockham's Razor"

What William of Ockham challenged were the complex theological "truths" of the day. New ideas and technologies from scientific inquiry were colliding directly with the old accepted premises. Ockham's Razor cut through the complexity.

Even then, people believed they lived in a complex and confusing world!

Are things really any different today than they were in the 14th century?

New ideas, technologies and human relationships are colliding with long-accepted organizational "truths". Managerial and organization development theorists propagate increasingly complex constructs about us, and our institutions. Most of us yearn for a few fundamental ideas to help simplify our chaotic lives.

Information now travels at the speed of light, but the process that happens between the ears is the same as ever before. Human nature hasn't changed. Fundamentally, we are the same people as those who lived in the 14th Century.

Technology has changed, so perhaps we should call the 21st Century version of William's idea Ockham's Laser^SM. The point remains the same. The way to simplify our lives is to cut through the chaos and elucidate those issues that are most important to each of us.

Use Ockham's Laser^SM to simplify, simplify, simplify. Use Ockham's LaserSM to lead more productive and meaningful lives.

I believe that it is possible to build decisive organizations that respect the right, need, and ability of workers to be good people and parents and have productive careers. It will be the responsibility of tomorrow's leaders to do so. Finding simple explanations and bringing about simple solutions to today's apparently complex organizational problems requires each of us to be more simple-minded.

Only the Simple-Minded Manager^SM can cut through the chaos.

*Simple-Minded Manager and Ockham's Lazer are service marks of Greenslade, LLC

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