Simplifying: The top priority for entrepreneurs and managers

The modern era seduces us with technology and its promises of increased productivity, but we risk underestimating the new skills required to properly manage this technology, its implications, the massive volume of information, and the high level of complexity that comes with it. We live in a state of constant ‘reactivity,’ always ready to respond to external signals, information, and inputs, where multitasking seems to be the only viable strategy to maintain an adequate level of efficiency.

Many believe that multitasking increases efficiency and productivity, but scientific research proves otherwise: those who multitask have trouble concentrating and are unable to filter out irrelevant information, ultimately suffering from higher stress levels. Furthermore, studies show that even after completing concurrent activities, a ‘fragmented’ mindset persists, along with a generalized difficulty in regaining focus.

It is a widespread belief that the most important thing is simply ‘getting things done’; in reality, the outcome we achieve, our output, depends heavily on how those activities are structured and set up.

The duration of an activity, its ‘cycle time’, within any system is not directly proportional to the system’s saturation; rather, it is exponentially correlated to the utilization rate of the system’s resources.

What does this mean in practice? If we have a group of people utilized at 90%, the time required to complete a specific activity will be longer than if that same group were only saturated at 50%. Beyond a certain point, around 80%, every additional task that arrives not only slows down the team’s performance but also makes it highly unpredictable: not only will it take much longer, but it becomes impossible to determine exactly how much longer.

Any variability within a group of people that is already saturated leads almost to a standstill, as well as to the unpredictability of actual task completion times. The same principle applies to an individual system.

It is possible to identify many operational strategies – at individual, team, and corporate levels – to reduce interruptions and simplify work activities. Let’s look at a few, drawn from the book “Lean Development and Innovation. Hitting the Market with the Right Products at the Right Time” (by L. Attolico, Routledge 2018)

Fluctuations in the arrival of tasks inevitably cause incoming queues in any system: the time required to “process” the work will tend to be variable and inevitably longer. It makes sense, then, to try to “level” the inflow of work toward us and each member of our team, promoting a workload that is as constant as possible.
If, for example, we create tight schedules without inserting breaks between activities, it is highly likely that at the slightest interruption or external variable, everything will fall apart, causing confusion and uncertainty up to a total standstill. It is therefore better to plan days and weeks by also inserting empty time buffers as shock absorbers for variables that we cannot predict. We need to be consistently utilized but not overloaded.

Reducing the number of tasks, we focus on within a single window of time promotes not only smoothness and flow, but above all, the actual completion of the tasks themselves. In fact, we often tend to overestimate our short-term capacity and completely underestimate our medium-to-long-term capacity.
If we learned to ration our tasks, keeping them generally in small quantities at a time, our performance over time would certainly increase. 72% of people face serious difficulties focusing on a single task at a time, causing slowdowns and energy drops that impact both their physical and mental well-being, as well as corporate performance.

Therefore, we end up delaying the completion of tasks when we attempt to manage more of them simultaneously than is humanly possible.
Working according to this principle means always moving forward in small steps: focusing on micro-steps creates an environment conducive to success, offering positive reinforcement for every single step forward.

If we want to become masters of smooth, flawless, and timely execution, we must always remember that “Simple is actionable, complicated is interesting” and reduce the size, not just the quantity, of our work-in-progress.
The American researcher Tony Schwartz has spent many years studying the factors that drive high performance in office environments and knowledge work. Schwartz argues that the average duration a person can maintain maximum intellectual productivity does not exceed 75 minutes. Therefore, he claims, filling our schedules with tasks that exceed this timeframe is counterproductive if we wish to simultaneously achieve high-quality results and a deep state of well-being.
Training ourselves to close tasks, rather than just starting them, is crucial.
Keeping the size of each single task small is not only essential but foundational, as it triggers a positive emotional loop that propels us into a whole new level of execution. In doing so, we become masters of fluid, rapid, and consistent action.

To ensure the best possible workflow, it is necessary to regularize and schedule interruptions, allocating a predetermined duration for unexpected events and disruptions whenever possible. One tactic is to assign a daily time window for each task that needs to be completed that day.
It is important to understand how to establish a literal “heartbeat” within the work team to ensure as many things as possible happen routinely. The number one thing to avoid is the typical chaos of inputs and outputs, meaning, from a statistical standpoint, avoiding excessive input and output variability for team members.

Over the course of a project, activities are often planned by focusing attention on the “doing” rather than letting ourselves be guided by the planning of final or intermediate results. It is not enough to introduce routine moments for the team to meet and discuss or execute activities; it is equally important to have predefined the outputs to be reviewed and to verify the intermediate results of individual tasks.
This is a baseline concept: it represents a completely different mindset.
Therefore, the goal is no longer to just plan activities, but rather the actual outputs that must be made clearly and unambiguously visible and tangible before the meeting. This creates a mix of event-based planning, expected deliverables, and the cadence at which we want things to happen. The focus shifts from planning the activity to the results of the activity itself, following a predefined rhythm.
Every time we manage to introduce “rhythmicity” into individuals or groups, we gain efficiency.

Another high-impact technique to use whenever executing a project involving multiple people is Pull Planning: demand-driven planning.
To use a simple example, in a restaurant, no one would start bringing food to a table without first consulting the customer. In collaborative group work, however, this detail is often forgotten, and we “push forward” the output of our activities, drawings, data processing, accounts, evaluations, decisions, without considering that the success of group work relies on delivering what is needed, when it is needed, in the right amount, and to the right place.
Every resource involved in the project responds to the needs of their internal and external customers and should produce only what is requested, when it is requested, or, at the very least, work in a way that satisfies their customers’ needs. This improves communication and effectiveness, ensuring the right thing is done at the right time and in the right quantity.
All this forces us to personally adopt a different mindset. Only if we behave as true customers will our suppliers be able to deliver what we need. But if the customer does not first clarify their own needs, no supplier will ever be able to satisfy them.