The Benefits Of Keeping It Simple For Your Business

In modern business, there is always a lot of attention paid to innovation and modernity. From training methods to problem-solving approaches, business owners will pay top dollar for something that has undergone multiple stages of development. The importance of something new, something special, has led to innumerable new job titles being created as people seek a new way to package standard business principles.

While innovation certainly has its part to play, and is an essential element in making a business effective, there is a lot to be said for avoiding innovation for its own sake. Particularly when it comes to problem-solving, the principle of KISS – “Keep it simple, stupid” – has a lot going for it. If you want your business to thrive, then it is fair to say that your best shot will begin with a very simple plan, with more specific ideas for more specific scenarios. Below, we’ll go into why simplicity is so beneficial in the early days of a business.

Simple principles are easier to pass on

When it comes to training new employees, you could allot several weeks and take them through the working practices of the business, addressing every potential scenario they could face. Or you could give them the general principles of the business, addressing the things they will absolutely need to know and answering any specific questions they have as they come up. The truth is, both cases will leave the employee exactly as ready to hit the ground running – because of all the hypotheticals they have been taught in the first case, they may have retained about half thanks to information overload. 

Don’t send anyone into the workplace unprepared, but by the same token, remember that it is possible to be too rehearsed.

Simple structures let you focus on what you’re good at

The concept of a “jack of all trades” is attractive to many entrepreneurs, conjuring an image of someone who can handle anything that is thrown at them. It’s often lost on people that the long-form phrase is “jack of all trades, master of none”. To make a long story short, if you are setting the staff rota, fixing the servers when they fail, running payroll and focusing on recruitment, you’re probably not doing any of those tasks to the optimum level. If you instead focus on what you’re best at, but leave the tech side of things to vendor management professionals and work with a competent recruitment agency, you’ll fare much better.

Simple solutions allow you to see where you’re going right (and wrong)

In any business, you will always want to emphasize what you are good at and stay away from (or improve) the areas where you’re not so strong. The more complex your solutions are, the harder it becomes to see what you’re really nailing and, conversely, where you are failing. By all means you can develop more sophisticated approaches the longer you are in the business, but to begin with, it is better to focus on keeping it straightforward; this will make it easier to identify and communicate areas for improvement.

Simplicity is an underrated quality in a small business, and it doesn’t require a lot of time to communicate. Stick to the simple side of things, and you’ll see the benefits in your business.