Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 296 | Strategy & Business Model | 1

Extractive summaries of and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 296 | May 12 – 18, 2023.

When Doing Less Adds Up to More

By Zeynep Ton | MIT Sloan Management Review | May 11, 2023

Listen to the Extractive Summary of the Article

Research has shown that people systematically overlook making subtractive changes as an option. There’s a tendency to default to addition (of features, products, or promotions) to grow a business but seldom a consideration of subtraction as a major change lever. As a result, decisions from upstream functions often reduce value to the customer because they make it difficult for customer-facing employees to provide good service. Productivity is low because of complicated workflows, errors, rework, confused customers who require more attention, and employees bogged down with tedious tasks.  Subtracting upstream, in contrast, is a more deliberate process that involves coordinating various functions of a business in order to reduce complexity for front-line employees and investing in those employees so they can better serve customers.

To start subtracting, upstream functions should spend time on the front lines talking to employees and their managers to identify the most significant factors affecting their workloads. Which of these activities drive value for customers, and which ones are a distraction? The same goes for the product or service offering: What can you take out that will strengthen your value proposition by making it easier for customers to find what they want or ensuring that what they get is what they need? What makes employees’ work needlessly tedious, unproductive, and unpredictable? How can you schedule non-customer-facing tasks or influence customer demand to better smooth the workload?

Upstream subtraction can make a huge difference in companies’ ability to reduce turnover — the root cause of many performance issues — and improve customer loyalty.  Subtracting variability in workload also makes stable schedules possible. 

Reducing the clutter of nifty but unnecessary products, tools, discounts, reports, communications, and processes leaves companies with fewer things to standardize and train employees in. Workforce stability allows leaders to involve employees in making decisions that affect their work by drawing on their experience and knowledge of the job and the customers, thereby boosting productivity and morale.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Research has shown that people systematically overlook making subtractive changes as an option. There’s a tendency to default to addition (of features, products, or promotions) to grow a business but seldom a consideration of subtraction as a major change lever. 
2. As a result, decisions from upstream functions often reduce value to the customer because they make it difficult for customer-facing employees to provide good service. Productivity is low because of complicated workflows, errors, rework, confused customers who require more attention, and employees bogged down with tedious tasks. Subtracting upstream, in contrast, is a more deliberate process that involves coordinating various functions of a business in order to reduce complexity for front-line employees and investing in those employees so they can better serve customers.
3. To start subtracting, upstream functions should spend time on the front lines talking to employees and their managers to identify the most significant factors affecting their workloads. 

Full Article

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Topics: Organizational Behavior, Productivity, Employees Efficiency