Another idea we teach in my School of Entrepreneurship is that complexity doesn’t scale.
If your business is complicated it’s hard to teach to others. It’s hard for anyone to understand.
Instead, make simple models that you can draw out on one sheet of paper to show how your business works, what the key functions are and just one or two numbers you measure in each key function (department) to set goals and determine how things are going. Then people know where they fit it, what their part is, and what needle they are trying to move.
Keeping things simple means that mission creep is avoided, and your team only has to get really good at a small number of things.
In our case, we created a simple functional model, a simple financial model, and a physical model (what does it look like). With these three, it’s simple, and we have full control as we can see what is most important to work on at any given time.
Is your business simple? Do your people think so?
When I was in middle school, a smart man told me, “KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid!”. I’ll never forget him telling me that.