Introducing Systematic Simplicity to Manage Decisions and Enlightened Planning are both about management decision making that addresses all relevant uncertainty in project, operations and overall corporate planning contexts including corporate strategy formation with a focus on interdependencies, first asking and then addressing all the right questions in the most effective way given the time and other resources available.

 

The advocated systematic simplicity approach to effective communication across silo structures during the analysis process using effective conceptual and operational toolsets builds upon conceptual and operational tools which have an established track record, and new perspectives provided by these books make the use of this toolset easier and more effective, with important mindset and corporate culture implications.

 

Past use of prototype versions of the current systematic simplicity approach in major organisations have been attributed with a potential payoff of £100 for every £1 invested by the senior managers involved. The underlying approach is centred on full generalisation of the ‘risk efficiency’ concept initially developed by Harry Markowitz, leading to his 1990 Nobel Prize for Economics. The focus of the basic generalisation is delivering a higher level of expected reward for a lower level of risk at the maximum level of risk which is prudent without making any restrictive assumptions about the measurement of ‘risk’. A further ‘opportunity efficiency’ generalisation of risk efficiency addresses appropriate trade-offs between multiple attributes as well as expected reward and associated risk for each relevant attribute. A ‘clarity efficiency’ component of opportunity efficiency is focussed on maximising clarity for all parties involved for the lowest feasible level of effort/cost with appropriate trade-offs between the level of clarity and the cost of achieving it. A wide range of well-founded approaches are synthesised to achieve what ‘best practice’ ought to be in this opportunity efficiency sense. Processes to implement the approach which are central to the clarity efficiency aspects are explained. Examples based on real cases are used to illustrate what is involved.

 

If you would like to see more detailed information, including introductory material, sample chapters, biographical information about the author and comments by colleagues from a range of perspectives about the systematic simplicity approach, a downloadable copy of a sample of the book Introducing Systematic Simplicity to Manage Decisions is available as is a sample of the book Enlightened Planning.

 

Introducing Systematic Simplicity to Manage Decisions can be ordered from Amazon or just click on the book cover image on the right.

 

Enlightened Planning can be ordered from Routledge or just click on the book cover image on the right to order from Amazon.

 

Discounts for large orders for course participants can be discussed with the Routledge Corporate and Institutional Sales team using the email address corporate.sales@tandf.co.uk