Simplicity: Transforming Your Work and Your Company in the New Economy - Softcover

Jensen, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006532179 ISBN 13: 9780006532170

Publisher: HarperCollins Business, 2001

Synopsis

How can you transform your work and your company for the new economy? By learning how to do more of what matters and less of what doesn’t.

In an increasingly complex business world, where the sheer volume of information available is multiplying exponentially, Simplicity helps people cut to the chase of what really needs to get done.

Using a powerful combination of stories, hands-on excercises and models that have worked in all types of organizations, Bill Jensen guides us thorugh what business needs to do to get simple.

This fresh, stimulating and highly practical approach to competing in the new economy gives you the power to create more flexible and productive organizations, more compelling experiences for colleagues and customers, and more fulfilling work for everyone.

About this title

Review:

Scary fact: business information doubles about every three years. In other words, if your job is complex now, in three years you'll have twice as much noise to sift through just to get your work done. Bill Jensen makes no bones about it: Making a job simpler is very hard work, and it's getting harder all the time. But he believes it's possible, and inSimplicity, he lays out concrete steps for managers to follow. For example, he offers a five-step process for launching a new project: know which few things are important; consider how people will feel when you move forward on these things; use the right tools; create expectations and then manage those expectations; and create a "teachable view" of what you're trying to achieve.

If you consider all five of these building blocks before launching a new project, you should be able to overcome one of the biggest problems workers have with their jobs: too much information, with too little filtering. In fact, Jensen says, about 80 per cent of business communication--meetings, e-mails, presentations, whatever--has a major problem: the information doesn't require action, or it requires action but there are no consequences of doing nothing. These building blocks can be applied to every form of communication and, most important, can be used as a formatting device to describe projects from start to finish quickly on a single sheet of paper. That'll get anyone's attention, from the boss on down to the people who actually have to do the work the project requires. It doesn't get any simpler than that. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com

From the Back Cover:

'How can you transform your work and your company in the new economy? By learning how to do more of what matters and less of what doesn't'

Simplicity is:
· All about competing on clarity
· Being disciplined about how to make sense of things
· Being passionate about how to use other people's time and attention
· When everyone knows how to get what they need to make a decision

Using a powerful combination of stories, hands-on exercises and models that have worked in all types of organisations, Bill Jensen guides us through what business needs to do to get simple.

This fresh, stimulating and highly practical approach to competing in the new economy gives you the power to create more flexible and productive organisations, more compelling experiences for colleagues and customers, and more fulfilling work for everyone.

"Bill Jensen gives us a smart, practical guide to the essential role of leaders in the knowledge age – creating clarity and context out of confusion."
'Don Winkler, Chairman and CEO, Ford Motor Credit Company'

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0006532179
• ISBN 13: 9780006532170
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240