Awesomely Simple
Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action
By: John Spence
Published: September 2009
Format: Hardcover, 208pp
ISBN-13: 9780470494516
ISBN: 0470494514
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
"What I have learned is that business is much less complicated than I thought", writes consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur John Spence in his management complexity removing book Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action. The author describes how businesses that get more simple, and become less complicated, will be more efficient, productive, and have stronger customer loyalty.
John Spence understands how increasing complexity, within an organization's management and customer relationships, results in lower profitability, less productivity, lower staff morale, and dissatisfied customers. In the place of more complex systems, that often dilute a company's values and mission, the author provides a more simple, and also much more effective plan of action. His six basic strategies for simplicity are:
* Vivid Vision
* Best People
* Robust Communication
* Sense of Urgency
* Disciplined Execution
* Extreme Customer Focus
John Spence (photo left) recognizes that many organizations practice one or more of the strategies for simplicity, but the truly successful and growing companies practice them all to some degree. The author's simplified approach to business management is to take care of the crucial issues, and avoid the unnecessarily complicated processes and systems that stand in the way of productivity, employee morale, and customer service. By breaking the key issues facing business down into the six most vital strategic areas, John Spence sharpens the focus of everyone in the organization on what is truly important for the company. A failure to maintain that focus on simplicity can result in disaster for a business. The six critical strategies remove the obstacles to a company's success.
For me, the power of the book is John Spence's uncanny ability to remove the extraneous, and unnecessarily complex ideas and processes that have found their way into so many companies today. These complicated issues have diverted talent and energy away from the organization's core values and vision. Complexity, for John Spence, stands in the way of business success. Not only does the author outline and explain each of his core strategies in a separate chapter, but provides a valuable self assessment tool at the end of each chapter discussion. By taking an honest audit of one's own company, it's easy to see where simplicity is needed to make the business more effective. At the same time, John Spence doesn't lose sight of other key components of business success including providing high quality products and services, maintaining a positive cash flow, and accepting the inevitability of change.
I highly recommend the business strengthening book Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action by John Spence, to anyone seeking to place stronger emphasis on the core strategies that make a company great. At teh same time, the book presents a hands on approach to self assessment of where complexity has slipped into the organization, helping the executive to find areas where simplification concepts can be applied most effectively.
Read the complexity removing book Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action by John Spence, and put the six core strategies to work in restoring simplicity to your company. Instead of complex systems that waste time, money, personnel, and other valuable resources, your business will be more focused, more efficient, more productive, and more profitable.
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