The Ceiling of Complexity
I came across this concept back in the mid 1990′s working for an entrepreneur who was way ahead in his thinking. His coach, in the US, named the theory and it’s identification in our business, at the time, changed our whole approach. Looking back this was a period of fantastic growth for me personally.
Anyway the theory goes that the Ceiling is evident in companies that have had tremendous growth. They have been successful and so continue to conduct business in the same way, however their old approach cannot handle more growth. Therefore the business itself becomes very complex, hence ‘Ceiling of Complexity’.
The solution is simple: change; implementing that solution, however, is not easy, as we all know! In my experience the first thing to change is your perspective.
Either the incumbent management team need to change theirs, or their needs to be an injection of a third-party viewpoint. This is why ‘back to the floor’ programmes work because managers see their business from a different angle.
How do you know if you’re in this situation?
- Repetitive sales figures, (doing more but achieving the same)
- Staff becoming frustrated, (work harder, achieve less, criticised more)
- Managers appear out of their depth, (running out of ideas and energy)
What do you do? Change something…inject some energy…celebrate something…but above all look at things from a completely different viewpoint…the warehouseman’s, a customer’s, a competitor’s, a shareholder’s…
Alternatively you could trust an advisor to tell you how it appears from the outside looking in!
