The Hindu Business Line : Simplicity on the far side of complexity

Do you feel alone in your organisation, like no one is listening? Take heart, you may not be alone — “those below you and above you feel the same way,” writes Matthew E. May in The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation ( www.crosswordbookstores.com ).

May has been associated with the University of Toyota for nearly a decade. His book is not about cars, but about the process that implements ‘a million ideas a year’. The engine of innovation draws its energy from every level of the organisation.

“Innovation isn’t about technology. And it’s certainly not about manufacturing. It’s about value, and opportunity, and impact,” says May. “At Toyota, every idea counts. It’s an environment of everyday innovation, the direct result of a fanatical focus on getting a little better, daily.”

Good enough never is, he declares. “When your whole company thinks like that, you’re unstoppable.” Business innovation is about satisfaction and value, not new gadgetry, May clarifies. “Customers don’t want products and services, they want solutions to problems.” Simple is better, when talking about solutions, and elegant is better still, he argues. “Elegance is simplicity found on the far side of complexity.”

An elegant solution is one in which the optimal or desired effect is achieved with the least amount of effort, explains May. “In a mathematical proof, elegance is the minimum number of steps to achieve the solution with greatest clarity. In dance or the martial arts, elegance is minimum motion with maximum effect. In filmmaking, elegance is a simple message with complex meaning.” In elegant solutions, you can find juxtaposition of simplicity and power, he says. “The most challenging games have the fewest rules, as do the most dynamic societies and organisations. An elegant solution is quite often a single tiny idea that changes everything.”

Returning to the problem of aloneness that we’d started off with, what is the solution? “Think big but play it close to the vest. At least at first,” advises May. “Dig your own job. Improve what you have control over. Work on ideas that are visible to those at least two levels above you. Work on ideas that have high impact and result in outcomes others will respect.”

Then? “Slowly build your network, one person at a time. Build the movement, grow the cause… Throw knowledge at people: books, articles, videos, experts.” And… “When you do have success, share the credit. Be humble. Success often breeds hubris, and with it complacency… Resist the urge to protect your status through means other than the innovative ways that got you there.”

The ‘aha’ point is to wake up one day and realise “that you don’t even know what you don’t know.” That’s when the real learning starts, says May. “That’s when the long journey to innovation as a way of life actually beings. Now that may take a few years in itself. Patience… patience.”

Patience would, however, be ill advised if you want to know when to lay your hands on the book!

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