Why some organizations succeed and others...

You want to maximize response? You have to minimize options. Will a picture help? Lucky for you, I just happen to have one from Stuff Happens.

Does it get you thinking about how you do things in your organization? Think about your print pieces, web sites, processes, voicemail...the whole shebang. There's always something you can simplify. In fact, I had one meeting today about simplifying our web site and have one scheduled for tomorrow about simplifying our volunteer sign-up process. In both cases, our current solution makes sense to us internally, but is stalling out externally. Instead of defending why we do it the way we do, we're going to figure out what needs to change. That means we have some work to do.

Simple is smart and it's hard work. Complicated is ignorant and it's lazy. Just sayin'.

Comments

[Phil Murray]

I'm sure your familiar with the 37 Signals guys- if not, you should read their book "Getting Real" available for free online at http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ where they talk about the process they went through to develop their online apps Basecamp, Highrise, etc.

They're all about simplicity in software design.

[Joel]

Easy: word reduction for communications by verbose pastors as Chief Editor
Very difficult: leveraging new feedback streams (Twitter, Facebook) with a congregation of late or non-adopters

[Greg on The Run]

I'm struggling with getting others past ignorant and lazy.