Slides Making the complex simple (EN)/media/Corporate/Pdf...© Vlerick Business School PERFORMANCE...
Transcript of Slides Making the complex simple (EN)/media/Corporate/Pdf...© Vlerick Business School PERFORMANCE...
MAKING THE COMPLEX SIMPLE
PROF DR MARC BUELENS
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PERFORMANCE MODELS 2014
Inspiration/Innovation
Intelligence
Institutions/infrastructure
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STARTING POINTS
VUCA
The age of scepticism
Our ‘lazy brain’ meets
big data
A complex world
Wicked problems
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THE FUTURE IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE
In a VUCA-world, companies and managers
are taking longer to reach critical decisions (Economist Intelligent Unit)
need to be willing to conceive multiple futures
find themselves more and more removed from reality
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A SCEPTICAL WORLD
Bombarded with brands
3.000 logo’s a day?
Boston Consulting group: 46% of Millennials use their smartphone to check prices
134.000 consumers in 23 countries: majority would not care if 73% (in Europe: 92%) of brands would disappear
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slowslow fastfast
OUR ‘LAZY BRAIN’ : SYSTEMS 1 AND 2 IN ACTION
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MORE INFORMATION, MORE ‘ BIG DATA’ …
Lead to more noise
Lead to late identification of the ‘signal’
Lead to ‘information overload’
“IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY THERE IS CONSTANT ACCESS TO VAST AMOUNTS OF INFORMATION. THE BASKET OVERFLOWS; PEOPLE GET OVERWHELMED; THE EYE OF THE STORM IS NOT SO MUCH WHAT GOES ON IN THE WORLD, IT IS THE CONFUSION OF HOW TO THINK, FEEL, DIGEST, AND REACT TO WHAT GOES ON.”
CRISS JAMI
COMPLEXITY IS A BUSINESS CHALLENGE
IT IS A SILENT KILLER
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WHY COMPLEXITY?
STRATEGY & STRUCTURE
Business model complexity
Portfolio complexity
We love division of labour ‘simple jobs’ ‘complex organizations'
We don’t trust each other: too many regulations
PEOPLE
We are too clever (clever people want to add, they hate not being complete)
We lack expertise. Pseudo-experts go for the complex
We believe in groups even when groups are not very effective
Diversity is extremely difficult to manage
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THE WELL-KNOWN CONSEQUENCES
Feature creep
The law of unintended consequences
From clear to ‘wicked’ problems
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Environment Mechanical Professional Organic VUCA
Decision-making Rule-based“Expert squeeze”
Informed intuition “Unknown unknowns”
Problems Well –Structured Reliance Ill-structured Wicked
Knowledge management
Combination Externalization Socialization Contextualization
Key-wordsOperations Research
Signal/noise ratio’s
Prediction markets;Neural networks
Black Swans; Obliquity; Memory of the future
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THREE MAJOR OVERLOADS
OverloadOverload
InformationInformation
EmotionalEmotional
OpportunityOpportunity
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“A copy of the daily New York Times contains more information than the average 17th-century Englishman encountered in a lifetime,” Geoffrey Nunberg
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Lead to ‘emotional overload’
Lead to ‘stop the planet’
Lead to clinical symptoms
A WORLD OF WINNERS AND SINNERS,MORE STORIES, MORE GAMES, MORE STIMULATION
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EMOTIONAL OVERLOAD
Dopamine makes everything urgent
We live in casino full of slot machines
Why does my brain feel so clogged up?
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OPPORTUNITY OVERLOAD
Everyone entrepreneur?
Authenticity for all of us
Make up your mind on all subjects?
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THE LAWS OF SIMPLICITY
1. Remove to improve
2. Simple rules as strong anchors
3. Take an outside-in perspective. Simplify for value
4. Identify designed complexity
5. Try wisdom
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LAWS OF SIMPLICITY
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REMOVE TO IMPROVE
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SIMPLE RULES AS STRONG ANCHORS
In essence, the anchoring effect is about the brain’s spectacular inability to dismiss
irrelevant information
Jonah Lehrer (2009)
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25.000 companies
44 years
Harvard Business Review April 2013
Better > cheaper
Income > cost savings
The third rule?
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THOMAS AMARILLO SLIM (1928 – 2012)
Play the players, not the cards
Play fast in a slow game, play slow in a fast game
If you can't spot the sucker within the first half hour at the table, then ...
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OUTSIDE-IN PERSPECTIVE (LISA BODELL)
1. Kill your own company
2. Include haters in your brainstorm
3. Rule # 6
4. Go from pain to gain
5. Figures out what your customers do all day
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IDENTIFY DESIGNED COMPLEXITY
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TRY WISDOM
Knowledge offers comfort; wisdom feels comfortable with uncertainty (Hall,2010)