This week dives into the road map to better complexity

The Simple

My brother is a high school English teacher.

He’s constantly telling me about the power of words. 

He says words usually carry a connotation: an association or preconceived meaning.

And that got me thinking about the word simple.

When we think of simple, many of us jump to low-value, unsophisticated, cheap. 

When it comes to the word complex, we think expensive, thorough, and valuable.

Given that most of us want a valuable firm, we get attached to this connotation.

We get caught conflating competency with complexity.

By knowing and doing more things, we feel that sophistication.

I did this. 

I didn’t like telling clients or friends that I didn’t know the answer to their questions.

I didn’t like appearing simple. 

I was proud that I worked with construction companies and dentists.

I covered my own perceived insecurities by saying yes to everything.   

But I learned that the adage holds up: Simple scales and complex fails.

Trying to Automation

A firm came to me last year wanting help with their systems.

They wanted to improve their automation and ‘streamline things.’

Part of our audit process includes looking at client and service lists.

They provided this spreadsheet:

They had 19 columns of services. One column was even called custom services.

Each team member completed varied tasks.

Their top employee did it all: managed the team, performed workers comp audits, and frequently checked the inboxes of important clients.

He was remoting into clients’ systems multiple times daily to check their inboxes.

I was shocked.

There was very little I could offer regarding automation until we addressed the elephant.

In their firm, they opted for massive service options and neglected an intentional firm direction.

They had created a monstrous cluster-f’ of complexity.

No level of automation was going to improve their efficiency.

Unfortunately, many firms have gone down this road of ‘revenue at all costs’ for too long.

Then they discover their revenue growth has left them with no profit or time.

And at the root of it, they’ve ultimately chosen to embrace the wrong type of complexity.

The Right Complexity 

I like a quote usually attributed to Leonardo Divinci:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

What I missed about this quote early on was that to get to simplicity, the type that scales a firm, you have to wade through a boatload of complexity.

Not the operational complexity of how to figure out how to be all things to all clients.

But the mental and visionary complexity to not do all the things.

 

If you don’t remember anything else from this newsletter, remember this:

 

We can either opt for suffocating tactical complexity or make the hard decisions and confront empowering strategic complexity. 

 

To get to a simple and scalable firm, you must look for and manage the strategic complexity.

For the firm owner who wanted more automation, this was my advice:

• Identify and commit to a new core service offer
• Remove all clients who don’t fit in that core offer
• Remove all clients who don’t/ won’t use their tools and processes
• Find partners who can deliver the auxiliary services to their core offer
• Reduce headcount to balance the new workload 
• Build a lead generation system for their new core offer.
• Build automations and workflows for new core offer.  

I understand that these suggestions would slash revenue, impact long-standing client relationships, and result in the loss of team members. 

But untying the knot of frontline complexity requires real change. 

Most tactical issues holding our firms back are not because of a lazy hire or the wrong practice management tool. 

It’s our infatuation with low-level complexity. 

Simple and scalable firms have done the hard work of figuring out how to manage the complexity at the top. 

If you’re looking for some support to simplify and scale your operations, my firm system audits are available for another week. 

The next round of audits won’t be available until late Q4. 

If you’re interested, reply ‘Systems Audit’ to audit@firmnexus.com, and I’ll send you the details.

Mark