Bill Canady explains simplification as the phase where businesses turn plans into action by making hard resource decisions. After mapping the business landscape, leaders must choose where to focus, which means disappointing some stakeholders. The CEO's job is to accept discomfort and position the team to accelerate.
You know, the simplification phase is, I think, probably the most interesting and really candidly the most exciting phase of the entire journey. And it's because things actually start happening, right? You really start making moves in the business. So when you come in and you start your segmentation, it's really about understanding your business and where things are and how they fit together and to give an outstanding outcome to both your company and your customers. Now that you're in simplification, you're making decisions, right? You're deciding what goes where, how are you going to support it, what gets more resources, what gets less resources. And candidly, these are extremely important. It's funny, we were just talking to some of our folks, and one of the things they were struggling with is, you know, you're going to have to disappoint some people. And that's absolutely true. You're going to make decisions at this point that are going to shift resources from what they were doing to what they should be doing. Now, the exciting part is, During this, this is where your company gets a chance to go faster. This is really where you get the payoff from all the energy and effort that's been in there. But in order to do that, you have to make decisions. You have to make choices. And that means there's some things, while it doesn't mean they're not valuable, they're not wonderful, they're not exciting, but some things are not going to have the same resources. That's where the CEO, the visionary, becomes important. You have to be able to decide what gets resources and what doesn't. It's uncomfortable. You're gonna make some people unhappy, but at the end of the day, you're gonna take and give your company, your team, the best chance to absolutely go and win.
