Six Simple Rules

How to Manage Complexity without Getting Complicated

By: Yves Morieux, Peter Tollman

Narrated by: Daniel Henning

Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

New tools for managing complexity.

Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group's fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past 60 years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness - that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems - has increased by a whopping factor of 35. In their attempt to respond to the increasingly complex performance requirements they face, company leaders have created an organizational labyrinth that makes it more and more difficult to improve productivity and to pursue innovation. It also disengages and demotivates the workforce.

Clearly it's time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with their traditional tools and instead better leverage employees' intelligence. This book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leading organizations.

The way to manage complexity, the authors argue, is neither with the hard solutions of another era nor with the soft solutions - such as team building and feel-good "people initiatives" - that often follow in their wake. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociology) and The Boston Consulting Group's work with more than 500 companies in more than 40 countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated.

Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman give managers a much-needed tool to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless complexity. Included are detailed examples from companies that have achieved a multiplicative effect on performance by using them.

It's time to manage complexity better. Employ these six simple rules to foster autonomy and co-operation and to effectively handle business complexity. As a result, you will improve productivity, innovate more, reengage your workforce, and seize opportunities to create competitive advantage.

©2014 The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (P)2017 Recorded Books

Very simple and practical

Yves deliver very structured methodology, the six tiles are really simple and practical, exhaustive examples attached.

Can recommend to and top or mid level manager.

helped me better understand workplace disfunction

also suggest buying the hardcopy to study and reference

gave me so many insights into why people do things as they do at my job and how I could help

Excellent and practical advice

This work is outstanding. It identifies how companies are lost in control falicies which are stifling improvement efforts and how the can untangle the mess and get back to the real work of improving people and creating value.

Simple, clear and engaging

If you could sum up Six Simple Rules in three words, what would they be?

Straight forward ideas to help makes things less complex in a business environment. Opened my mind to some new methods.

What about Daniel Henning’s performance did you like?

Very engaging. Made me feel like he was talking to me, not "narrating".

A simple yes profound book

The authors are Senior Partners at the Boston Consulting Group and provide a simple set of rules that lead to success. If you are frustrated with the hard (authoritarian, old school) style, and the soft (touchy-feely) approaches and yearn for a strategy that appeals to human engagement on the front lines, then you will really enjoy this book.