Q&A: Keeping It Simple

BCG's Six Simple Rules sets out to simplify some organizational complexity

Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? According to the Boston Consulting Group's Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past 60 years. And organizational complicatedness—the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums and systems—has increased by a factor or 35. What's going on? Clearly, it's time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with traditional tools and instead better leverage their employees' intelligence, according to BCG's Yves Morieux, Senior Partner and Director of the BCG Institute for Organization. Morieux, one of the authors of Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated (along with BCG's Peter Tollman), argues the solution lies in a handful of rules designed to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless organizational complexities. Morieux sat down recently with Consulting to discuss the book, the rules and the outlook for organizations that conquer the complexities to create competitive advantage.

Consulting: Can you give me a sense of where the idea and inspiration for the book developed?