ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

Stop Overcomplicating: The #1 Killer of Productivity

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 2 • Episode 48

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In this conversation, Santiago and Simon Copsey delve into the complexities of management and the importance of simplification. Simon shares his journey from software development to consulting, emphasizing the need for managers to understand the interconnectedness of their teams and the impact of their decisions. They discuss the theory of constraints, practical tools for simplification, and the role of middle management in creating or alleviating complexity. The conversation highlights the significance of trust, clear goals, and the distinction between activity and impact in fostering a productive work environment.


•Complexity in management often arises from a lack of understanding of interdependencies.
•Creating simplicity is a complex process in itself.
•Managers need to be curious and ask why to uncover underlying issues.
•The theory of constraints can help identify where to focus efforts for maximum results.
•Middle management can be both a blocker and a facilitator of change.
•Trust between teams is essential for reducing complexity.
•Productivity should be defined as making progress towards clear goals.
•KPIs and OKRs should be used judiciously to avoid losing sight of the big picture.
•Assumptions should be made explicit to improve decision-making.
•Simplification requires a cultural shift within organizations.

Connect with Simon: https://curiouscoffee.club/



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Simon Copsey is a delivery and transformation consultant based in London, unravel complex obstacles in weeks, not years, so teams deliver better software faster to happier customers. Starting as a full stack developer and tech lead, he shifted focus from code to what happens behind the screen, how teams organize, solve problems, and improve. his consulting career, working with CIOs and CTOs across industries to diagnose cross-functional issues, drive change, design digital products, and earn an International Innovation Award nomination. With expertise in engineering management, product leadership, lecturing, startup coaching at Citi Launch Labs, conference speaking and publishing, Simon Blen's hands-on tech experience with the scientific method and modern theory to simplify chaos and boost results. Simon Copsey, welcome to Productivi-tre uh Thank you for having me Santiago. Simon, this topic is very close to my heart. I invest a lot of time trying to break down complexity. So I'm very excited to talk about you and give advice and tricks to our audience to break down and remove complexity and barriers. How did you get into this? How did you became a business and complexity and simplicity consultants. Ooh, let's call me a transformation consultant. Otherwise, what you say sounds quite amazing. I think maybe that's something I aspire to be. But the way I got into this is I started out as a software developer. But I quickly became more interested in what was happening behind the screen rather than on the screen, how teams organized themselves around problems and continuously improved their approach. um And then that just led me into the deep dark world of consulting. I worked across the software development life cycle, probably much like you, maybe not to the same degree. But um then what I started to find was um organizations have this tendency of getting their own way, as I think you're alluding to. And that just gets in the way of the staff, the customers, and organization as a whole. everything you're describing is getting really excited. You said you started as a software engineer. Do you think that people trained to develop and building things are more prone to making management over complex? I don't, that's a really good question, that's what I'm thinking. I don't have enough data to say. I think it's more than that. think management, many people, management is a whole discipline in itself that I think has been lost and I think therefore when it comes to approaching organizations which tend to be complex, I think we make mistakes regardless of our roots. But what comes up for you? um I don't think I have also a specific answer to this question, but um it's like, management and building things are two different things, right? Particularly when you mix the component of people into the mix. So I do agree with you that some people that are used to build things is perhaps not so great at building teams or managing... um entire situations. uh Oh yeah, that's very true. They are very different disciplines, very different sports, very different things that make you successful as a software developer to a manager, but also a chemical engineer to a manager. So I absolutely agree with your point. Yeah. I think, yeah, as you say, like building teams is maybe a misnomer. I think it's about creating the conditions for teams to succeed. You're not really building anything. You're just making sure that the conditions are there so teams can do what they would otherwise naturally do. You're just trying to get out of their way, really. So yes, yes, agree with everything you said. There is a book I love, it's called The 80-20 Principle by Richard Koch. And I want to read a piece of it to you. It says, managers love complexity. Complexity is stimulating and intellectually challenging. It leaves boring routine and it creates interesting jobs for managers. Do you agree? I think we need to define what complexity is. I think that's challenging in itself and I think that maybe would add some definition here. I'm wondering if, I don't know if I could define complexity directly, but maybe defining a symptom of complexity that we see from the management angle is when we try to fix something, but looking at the organization, because there's so many different parts and it's not clear how, hmm. As a manager it's not clear if I do something over here how it will affect another part or if I want to affect another part where do I poke? It's kind of like, yeah I'm not sure. It's hard to find... Cause and effect aren't clear. So if I do this what will happen? It's not clear. I think that's maybe my simplistic view of how complexity affects managers and if that's the case I'm not sure if managers enjoy that. think most managers seem to... be burning out and trying to just get things across the line but you make me think you make me think and I'm excited by the Pareto the Pareto kind of reference so tell me more about what you're thinking there Santiago let's explore that what Richard Koch is trying to say that... Creating complexity can be intellectually challenging, creating complex things. Because simple, easy can be boring. And I think this is where he's heading. This is where he's heading. That's why I manage to create complex systems, complex processes, because it's interesting. Oh, that's really interesting. I hadn't interpreted it. I really love that. That interpretation feels really quite nice. I know as a software engineer, I always wanted to create sophisticated solutions. Mm-hmm always then realize that sophisticated solutions were the worst kind because it means behind every problem there should be a simple answer but to get to the simple answer you have to go through a lot of thinking a lot of understanding of the problem and it's what is simple in solution is complicated in kind of journey to get there so I think yeah to your point if we have a bias for sophistication as managers we're going to create a lot of process debt or you know we're going to create problems for ourselves down the line perhaps is that what you were thinking because i quite like that Exactly. Well, I think there different cases here, uh but I um think an important distinction that I always make is that making things simple doesn't equate easy. Simple is not easy. Making things simple is complex in its essence itself. um But we add a lot of extra complexity that is clearly not needed in a lot of processes, not only processes. um But I think that the word sophistication and creating advanced, let me use this word, advanced stuff tends to be mixed with the simplicity that companies need. Simon, I have another question for you. What do you think are the most common ways managers unknowingly create complexity instead of reducing it? When we're schooled, I think this goes back to Akof if I understood him correctly, I when we're schooled what we're often taught to do or even before that, when we're trying to understand something what we do is we take it apart and we try to understand each piece in isolation. We don't understand them in concert. And in organizations we try to do the same thing. When we're trying to understand any one piece as a consultant, as a manager, ah we try to understand and optimize each piece in isolation. ah and we tend to not get the results we want because what we forget is that when we try and when we change one piece it affects another so for example if you uh if you're in a simple software as a service business and you increase sales that will have a knock-on impact down the line actually let's do something else, let's do something more kind of close time right? If we hire a hundred more developers and forget about testers, forget about anything else further down the SDLC, it's clear that all those extra developers aren't going to be able to do much more work because you've now kind of uh affected the front end without thinking about the back end, you know what comes later on in the process right? So anything you do has an effect um somewhere else. You can't optimize each part of organization in isolation. That's not how we're taught. We're taught to break down problems into pieces and solve each piece in isolation. uh And so I think as managers that we tend to... uh And that's, guess that's exaggerated as managers. We tend to be given our own targets. So you might have a manager as a developer team, you might have a manager at a test team, the developer team is ship as many changes as you can, testers are test, know, run as many tests as you can. But none of these necessarily equate to uh shipping better software faster, right? none of them will necessarily get us there. sorry, what I was trying to say in a long way, the way you me think that I like that Santiago is in the way that we're schooled and in the way that organizations typically are run, uh we are incentivized to optimize each part. But as we optimize each part in isolation, that actually hurts other parts of the organization. And so what we need to start to think about is how one part affects another before we can actually uh not feel the bite of complexity. What comes up for you? And how can you do that, Simon? How can you break those silos, which are created with the best of the intentions, as you said. Every team is trying to do their best, to be more agile, to be better, but there are domino effects everywhere. that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're quite right. Just sorry, just to lean into the point you said that people are trying their best. People are good. And the interesting point about that is that means that for an organization to get close to where it wants to be, it's often it's management policies that are getting in the way of internal constraints, not external constraints, right? Because we've got good people, they're trying to do good work. It's just that if we just are able to help them rather than hinder them, we can kind of probably get closer to our goal. So Well, scientists have the answer for while now, right? um Scientists have always managed to get to understand how different things are interconnected and how one thing affects another. And one of the things that my mentor introduced me to about seven years ago was something called the theory of constraints. And that doesn't, that name doesn't necessarily do it justice, but it's uh the originator of the theory of constraints was a physicist. And what he saw was when it came to social problems, like organizational change, often um it wasn't it didn't follow a particular set of rules that were maybe produced that gave reproducible results. So he brought physics, came from a physics background and he tried he applied physics to organizational change as well as other kinds of system change. And whilst organizations seem complex, that's a very subjective view. When you start to think about it as a scientist that actually can reduce it to a complicated or simple view that allows you to actually know where to focus your efforts for maximum results. Yeah, you talk a lot about the scientific method in management, but how does it look day to day on a more practical way? Sure, think the most, maybe the simplest way of visualizing is when you go to the doctor, right? It's probably not a nice thing to think about, but when you go to the doctor, right? um A human body is complex, but somehow doctors, especially general practitioners, uh family doctors, seem to know where to look. um And most of the time, hopefully, come to the right conclusions. Whereas in organizations as managers, We often do get training and that often leads us to the wrong conclusions quite quickly, at least for me as a manager I failed. So the question is why that is. And so what you see doctors doing is when they see problems in a human patient, they don't assume that the problems they can see are where the problems stem from. They recognize their symptoms, their effects or something deeper, and they try and trace them back. And they use the pattern of symptoms to try and work out the underlying cause. So for example, if you have a runny nose and you have a temperature, maybe it's flu, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So they work back from effect to cause. So the symptoms are only a clue, only a starting point, they don't treat those directly and they work backwards. When it comes to organizations, I don't know about you, but when I was a manager, if I saw something like growing attrition, I'd treat that as a cause, not a symptom, but it is a symptom. If I saw slowing software delivery, What would I do? I'd probably introduce scrum or something. I'd treat it as a cause, as an isolated thing in itself, not as an effect to something deeper. I wouldn't be curious. I wouldn't say, why is software delivery slowing? um Why are costs increasing? Why is attrition increasing? But all these things are signals, are effects, are bad smells that come from something else. And the first question we need to ask is not, what should we do? But where is this coming from? And that starts to lead us into the kind of more guess the scientific approach of trying to work backwards to find the undone cause. Simon, what other thinking tools do you recommend managers to use to fight their own bias towards making things more complicated? I'm probably going to point to the same ones and the reason for that is Theory of Constraints has a number of tools in it. It goes from everything from being clear and what you're optimizing for your goal all the way through to implementing solutions. But a key part of every single piece of it is exposing your assumptions because your assumptions dictate the results you'll achieve. So the whole of the theory constraints is about making your assumptions about the problem or about your solution or about implementation explicit so that other people can scrutinize them and make sure that they're more likely right than wrong. Because the world is more complex than we can understand. Our minds are just running simple simulations. So we have to accept that our assumptions more often than not are going to be wrong. um So your point around assumptions is really key. m there's a series of tools in there. There's a series of tools called the thinking processes that can lead you from all the way from a problem you're facing all the way to the solution and kind of work on it collaboratively. Let's speak a little bit about organizational design and middle management. Middle management is all under fire. um Are middle managers sometimes the bigger blockers of transformation because they hang on into processes instead of questioning them? I've heard that, but I think maybe there's a step before that which is why the middle managers there. They're there for a reason, they're all hired for a reason. Actually, I think there's two questions underneath that that may be important. One is how do we get to the point where we have a single amount of middle management? And secondly, are people adverse to change? Perhaps so the first one is um If you have your system is perfectly designed to get the results the results it gets so if you have a lot of middle management It's not because we like hiring middle managers your organization has made it necessary to have a large number of middle managers so if you really feel that um There's something to be looked at that we need to look at why we have a large number of middle managers And often it is because maybe you deal with a large number of outsources maybe you deal um Maybe you've kind of gone to a point of kind of focusing on inspection for quality as opposed to building quality into the process. Maybe you kind of got a more commanding culture as opposed to a command and control culture or some such, don't know. Probably whatever it is, it's there for a reason and we need to understand and appreciate the reasons behind the middle managers. Middle managers, everyone in the organization is good and trying to do the best they can, as you said, right? So we just need to respect that. The second bit around, no one, no one... I recently had a kid. Everyone enjoys change, but they don't enjoy being changed. We will embrace change, we will seek change, but that change needs to be an improvement. If it's not an improvement, we won't embrace it. um And so I think with middle managers, as with anyone in organization, if there is a resistance to change, it means that there's something about that change that's wrong. and it needs to be understood. There's some important information there behind every yes but is a blessing. um But I feel like I've of answered your question in two different ways and not actually directly. So what comes out for you? Should companies hire simplifiers to go through all these disconnections that you have mentioned, that you have referred to, and a lot of good intentions without really looking at the trickle-down effect that they create? Ooh, I mean, you know, if you class me as a simplifier, I'd love to say yes, but is it my interest to say yes? I don't honestly think so, right? I think what organizations would most benefit from is helping their managers. If managers are there to increase the cooperation across teams so an organization can get close to where it wants to get to, ideally we want those managers to have the skills necessary to see the organization as a full system. We want everyone to have that ability and it's just unfortunate that education and our conditioning um leads us to look at the parts as opposed to the whole. I think that's maybe a Western phenomenon, I don't So ideally we just want to nurture that in every part of the organization, particularly management, because management are there to create the conditions for their staff to succeed and if their staff are doing things that affect other teams negatively uh then we're going to spend more time getting in each other's way rather than making progress. So no, think what we need to do is we need to increase, we need to amplify the effects of uh managers who then are, if the role of managers is to amplify the effect of their staff, we need to amplify the effect of managers. so they can further amplify the effect of their staff. And to do that, the best way is to help managers see through the perceived complexity of an organization and see the simplicity behind it. Simon, I am speaking a lot about busyness these days. um Because... Managers, I'm not saying all of them, but many managers confuse activity with impact. And that's one of the things that somewhat create complexity in my view. We continue doing more and more more things and you see it in many forms, Internal communications, new processes. uh It comes in every form. How can managers get down the hamster wheel of doing, doing, doing? I'm here to do as much as possible and get into, all right, let me think. What is the right thing to do here? Yeah, you know, that's a good question and I definitely struggled with that as a manager. It's hard. I guess the first question, the first definition I think maybe is productivity is, that would be helpful, sorry, is productivity is the... Productivity is making progress against your goal. If an organization doesn't have a goal, then no one can be productive, no one can be effective. um So I think the first thing an organization needs to do to help its managers be effective or productive, whichever word you want to use, is having a clear goal. um Of course an overarching goal for everyone helps us build cooperation but of course that needs to probably be broken down into the conditions that will enable that. So for example yeah you may want to increase profits now in the future that's fantastic but... That's what you need for that. Well, you need to provide a secure and satisfying workplace for staff. Otherwise your staff will leave, they'll go elsewhere, they'll go to your competitors and you won't have a business tomorrow. You need to look after the environment because if you don't have an environment tomorrow, we won't be here tomorrow. be here to make increased profits now in the future. So we can kind of break these things down to the point that they become tangible. They kind of transcend from strategy to tactics. And that then gives managers a clear goal and they can differentiate what is productive versus not productive. What should I be doing versus what should I not be doing? I think you've probably seen this more than me and know product managers probably facing this the most in that you know they have a huge backlog, but it's like What is the priority what is not? And that only becomes you can only say You can only create focus you can only say no when you have a very very clear goal and one goal um Yeah, does that resonate with you? Do you think KPIs, OKRs and other tracking methods help reduce complexity? Hmm, guess it depends how they used it's not a bad or a good tool. It's just it depends how it used it's used I think I think it's Alex Knight. I hope I got his name right wrote a book called Pride and Joy and I think the what if I I read it a while ago But what I think he was trying to establish was that if you use KPIs or cars Everywhere and anywhere you get lost in the detail and you forget the big picture and that takes you further away from achieving your goal because you can't see what your goal is anymore. So ideally if you're going to use measures you use them at the very top, ah at your goal and maybe, but not everywhere else unless, know, just use them consciously and in the right places, not everywhere I think. uh And also understand, I guess you need to probably understand your system a little bit, right? A lot of things you don't need to measure and you can't measure and... Yeah, I think. But there's a bit more to it than that, think. You make me reflect. I'm gonna throw you a curve ball now, Simon. one! Do you think that leaders or managers sometimes create complexity because it protects their role? They're making themselves indispensable? Well, I think... I think I need to start always, this, so a lot of what I'm saying is coming through my interpretation of thinkers like Goldratt and Ackof and Deming. So anything that sounds good that I've said comes from anything bad that I've said comes from me and my misinterpretation. So I think, I think what Deming and maybe Goldratt might argue here is that we need to assume people are good. If we don't assume people are good, we'll just forgive me, we'll bitch and moan, and we'll assume that they're bad people and there's nothing we can do about it. Whereas if we, Yeah, if conversely we assume they're good, then what we'll do is we'll try to understand why they behave in the way they are, because they're obviously trying to do the best they can. And there must be something to learn there that we can together understand and therefore overcome this problem. So often I think where politics... and empire building comes from is if there isn't a clear goal in an organization, then each part has to assume their own goal. And if each part assume their own goal, they're probably gonna often be in conflict. And if they're gonna be in conflict, then that's where you have these kind of empire buildings, these kind of information asymmetry, I think. So I think most of the time it will come from organizational conditions, the organization letting the staff down. Deming might argue four percent of the time it's due to um individuals with um less good intentions but it's always the minority. Most of the time it's the organization letting the staff down. Did that answer your question in some ways? Anything that comes up for you though? Simon, what is the role of trust between teams and in an organization to break down complexity? So I guess trust is, think Edgar Schein said that one can measure trust by, um you can, measure trust is the ability to predict the behavior of someone else or another team. um So I'm not sure if that directly relates to complexity, but I'm guessing maybe another way of looking at it and tell me if this clicks with you and your question, Santiago, because this is very good one is. is synchronization. um Teams, organizations, know, complexity, one part of it is interdependency. One kind of, know, necessity for you to have complexity is interdependency between different parts of an organization. If you didn't have many different parts that were interconnected, I don't think you'd have complexity. uh An organization can't deliver a product without the synchronized efforts of many teams. Another way putting that by Goldrad is, or by Drucker, I don't know, was uh an organization exists because we want to try and achieve something that we can't, no one person can achieve alone. That's why I have organizations. So often there will be interdependency. It's kind of natural to a degree. But if that is the case, it means that we need to work together, we need to cooperate to uh get something out the door, to achieve something, to get close to our goal. And that's where synchronization is necessary. We need to be doing the same thing at the same time. If we're all working on different priorities at the same time, but we're interdependent, work will just get stuck between teams. So I think uh in any organization, synchronization comes from timing and from being... Working the same thing at the same time having the same priority at the same time And so I think and maybe that's where then trust evolves from right if we're all working the same thing at the same time We can then predict each other's behaviors and if you predict each other's behaviors, that's Where trust comes from? um Yeah, so I think that then is a feature of complexity or an antidote to complexity Let us do five rapid answer questions. Okay Number one, is complexity more often a cultural issue or an individual issue? I believe cultural because a lot of us create complexity in our organizations, so it's probably something in our culture about how we think. Number two, what is one sign a manager is over-complicating? If everything's on fire all the time and we're trying to tackle many different things. Number 3, one book every manager should read to learn simplification. The Goal by Ellie Goldbrow 4. What's harder, simplifying a process or simplifying a team dynamic? Team dynamic because that's one level removed. And number five, if you could ban one management habit tomorrow, what would it be? jeez. It has its place. in a minority of situations but power over. Simon, for the managers that are listening, who feels a bit stuck in a complex soup, a complex environment, ah within his or her team, outside his or her team, what is the first practical thing they should make tomorrow? be curious, ask why. Working backwards from ah when you see something that doesn't quite make sense, yeah, just be that little bit more curious like a scientist, like a physicist, try and trace backwards and see where things come from. How can people get in touch with you, know more about you and learn and work with you, Simon? I'm not sure I'm particularly interesting but I would love to get to know others. I'm at CuriousCoffee.club huh. What can we find there? Sorry, that's the website. It's a bit of a weird domain name. It's not .com. It's curiouscoffee.club. Thanks for clarifying. Simon, thank you so much. This was very insightful. um There is so much to uncover for us as humans. I love what you said about our capacity to do simulations is very limited. Couldn't agree more with this you're trying to manage a department and there are another 50 departments around you Doing a million things that you don't know and you're it's impossible that your brain will ever connect them and I want to link this also with the uh goals and getting together around Rallying together around common goals that um Help us Roe in the sense of guide us rowing in the same direction uh Because based on what you say, I don't think that we will be able to ever connect all these dots I don't know if AI will be But I do think that with the best of the intentions humans will still working in their own teams and continue working in their own somewhat silos because it's human nature to work in tribes and in small groups. I want to thank you for all your insightful wisdom and for being with us today, Simon. I appreciate you wording it so politely, that's very generous of you. Lovely to be with you Satyari, your questions were very well thought through and made me think. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you so much.