Simple + Relevant = Excellence

We have been discussing a lot of things about excellence in this blog and trying to build a mechanism which can become a second nature for us to help ourselves become excellent in whatever we do. I have come across two more things that will help us in this transformation.

If one is trying to excel at something, it is critical that he/ she understands what it is completely and is able to define it in simple terms. He/she could remember even in sleep and does not have to refer to some powerpoint or some book or some notes stored in. This will also help in explaining the same to others easily to help them understand what you are trying to do and they too can remember these things themselves. It also becomes easy for one to assess if these simple things that one is trying to do are moving in the direction one wants and take the necessary course corrections. If you observe many successful people, you will observe that they follow this principle knowingly or unknowingly. Each one of them manage their operations with just 3 or 4 or 5 key parameters / strategies / thoughts which they will be able to remember every time and the organization can work around these 5 strategies and build the details. So the important thing to build excellence is make it SIMPLE – Simple to define, Simple to understand, Simple to monitor and Simple to do midway correction. Anything you initiate which required more than few bullet points to explain, will be difficult to achieve.

Now that we have been able to define what we want to do or what approach we want to take etc. in simple manner, it is necessary to keep all the activities true to what we have set to achieve. There are several actions we or our teams might initiate which may not be directly RELEVANT to the objectives and although these actions might be defined in a few simple bullets, it will not regally give the results we desire.

So Keep it Simple and Relevant to achieve anything in Excellent manner.

This looks very beaten down thought but try and observe yourself if you are really following this rule. You will find more times when you are not following than the times when you are following this rule and the results you achieved would tell you the story.