Author’s Note: I originally learned about the laws of subtraction some years ago when I was leading a research and innovation organization. The six principles in this article came from The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rule for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything by Matthew E. May. Business architects can apply these principles to produce more value and raise their level of success in any organization.
What isn’t there can often trump what is.
Business architects, strategists, and planners like to create comprehensive, coherent, and complete models. This might be exactly what is needed in some cases but most of the time they are spending 80% of their effort for the last 20% of the model – and adding very little value in the process. Executives are rarely enamored with complex, data-heavy viewpoints. They are searching for insight and meaning. One of my standing pieces of advice for business architects is: “less data, more insight.”
The simplest rules create the most effective experience.
People come to work every day wanting to do their best. Often it is well-intended “rules” that get in the way of actually producing their best. As an ex-psychologist I find it fascinating that as you move higher in the organization, the prevailing view of management is influence and collaboration and as you move lower in the organization the management focus turns to control and rules. What people want are guardrails that set wide boundaries so they have the freedom to do their jobs in a way that works best for them. As business architects we should be more focused on guardrails than standards, governance, and rules.
Limiting information engages the imagination
Great ideas are best served half-baked. When we present a new idea to a group, we like to be prepared – have all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. In fact we are taught from a very early age that preciseness is good. But the very completeness of a new concept can turn people off. Often people react negatively to an idea because they are focused on one small element, not the big picture. Fully fleshed out ideas also don’t leave room for others to contribute and make the idea their own. Get business leaders engaged in your business architecture projects by only giving them part of the picture and encouraging them to supply the rest.
Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints
Early in my career I managed an incredibly talented team of technicians who saw their role as overcoming the technical and organizational constraints in their path to get the job done. One of my peers used this quote from Eric Hoffer to describe them: “The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way.” Too often we see the political and cultural constraints imposed on us as roadblocks instead of opportunities for creative solutions.
Break is the important part of breakthrough
I work with lots of strategists but I don’t see a lot of interesting strategy. Most of what I see are strategies for incremental improvement – more of the same, only better. Everyone needs these types of strategies, but it is the really innovative strategies – the out of the box ideas, the breaks with the past – that create breakthrough performance. I frequently use the Blue Ocean approach to help organizations find breakthrough strategies that differentiate them from their competitors or their past. If you really want a great business architecture practice, you can’t do what everyone else is doing. You have to be different.
Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing
Action is highly over rated. Thinking is the hard work and finding the time to think is often harder. Most managers live inside a tornado of back-to-back meetings and deliverable deadlines. Everyone wants us to act and then act faster. Yet, to improve and grow, what we need most is time to think, to ponder, to muse, to reflect, to dream. This is where the magic happens, where new ideas are hatched, where new worlds are imagined, where our lives are changed. Give yourself time to think and dream about what could be.
The bottom line -pay yourself first.
Schedule some time on a regular basis to sit back and think about how you work – what you do and how you do it. Consider ways to work less but produce more – not by being superefficient but by doing things differently, collaborating more, and worrying less about the details. Success isn’t created through creating more data. It is often the simplest models that produce the most insight.
