I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day.  My friend works for a Fortune 100 company.  We were discussing some of the major changes and pressures they are facing. 

Like many organizations its size, her company realizes that it must simplify.  However, as is also the case with their similar-sized peers, a lot of their internal (and many of their customer-facing) processes are pretty complicated. Simplifying isn’t going to be that simple.

We discussed some of the obvious challenges in simplifying. They’ll face politics, organizational silos, lack of information sharing, and a lot of tangled up interdependencies. Yet, I’m not too worried about those issues.  Lean and other process re-engineering tools are well equipped to handle them.  Changing culture will also take some work. However, they’ve got the tools and focus needed to work through that as well. 

The hidden challenge that might undermine their efforts is the way that their current processes are perceived.  Over time, processes in large organizations tend to become big, ugly, and complex.  Most people recognize that they aren’t efficient. Yet, they become sensitized to them. (For more on sensitization see my prior post Are your employees and customers engaged or just sensitized?).  Those process start feeling normal. 

When a bad process becomes the norm, any improvement seems like a major victory.  Cutting a twenty click ordering process down to ten clicks is a 50% improvement.  However, while your company is celebrating its success, Amazon is rolling out 1-Click Ordering.

Making something easier does not necessarily make it easy.  Instead of focusing on how much you’ve improved, ask yourself how much is left to improve.  That will truly drive you to become more competitive.  More importantly, it will transform your organization into one with which it is truly easy to do business.