Clutter

I'm always surprised how the clutter build up.

Whether in my client's organisations, or my own. We add new things - ideas, processes, connections - faster than we remove them.

In the early days, that's fine - we have room and we're growing physically - products, services, people, premises, but before long we become established and our task is to master what we do, more than add new things of maybe only marginal importance. Like unwanted guests at a party, they require our attention but don't add much in return for it.

And these things that we add seldom arrive alone. They come as part of a package, like those software programmes and apps that are "fully featured" and contain far more than we want or will use. We may not need these extra features, but they still occupy storage and processing space.

The same seems to apply to organisations. We know what the Pareto principle tells us - that 80% of our impact comes from 20% of our resources but we often fail to follow up on it. De-cluttering …