What is Radical Simplicity?
Welcome to our website! This is the place to learn more about us, what we do, the approach we take, and why it matters to us. We look forward to partnering with you to achieve results that matter most to you too.
First, why the brand Radical Simplicity?
The word radical is often in the press and media today. People who become radicalized are often associated with evil forces that kill. This conception is the opposite: a force for the good that takes us back, grounds us, pointing to the best in humanity. The definition states, “going to the root or origin of, forming a basis or foundation, living from the essence of something.”
That something is also referred to regularly by marketers and leading management thinkers, and that is simplicity, which is often associated with a certain beauty. The dictionary definition says that simplicity is “easy to understand, unpretentious, sincere, and natural.” When we experience simplicity in design we breathe easier, productivity and relationships flow.
Apple products are the best example of the power from a business operating with a passion for radical simplicity.[1] Leaders who are focused on the essence of what matters achieve results, naturally.
[1] Insanely Simple – The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, Ken Segall, 2012
After spending over thirty years, half of it as an executive in three large, complex, and successful (both culturally and financially) Canadian organizations, I founded Radical Simplicity Inc., a consulting company that works with leaders and organizations to hone in on the greatest levers for achieving their highest aspirations and sustaining high performance.
The majority of my career was spent in leadership roles in human resources. It is a function that people have come to love to hate. An article in Harvard Business Review regarding human resources will generate many more negative blog posts than any other topic. I understand why.
There were times in my career when people worked together in flow; alive, productive, accomplishing, and there were times when people seemed to be self-destructive, toxic and failing. In both cases, the performance of the organization prospered or stagnated. In both cases, human resources played a role.
In the first case, HR worked with business leaders to create the business strategy and goals, tapping into the highest aspirations and values of the people involved, and honestly assessing current reality in relation to the goals; every action naturally led us to achieve impressive results together in a very short period of time.
In the second case, I would find myself in meeting after meeting wondering what we were doing and what was being accomplished, accepting a lot of talk with no meaningful results.
Evaluating the times when I was most successful as a human resources professional, I discovered that it was the underlying structure that determined the organization’s behavior. For an organization the implication is that those actions and behaviors will ultimately lead to its performance. It’s a piercing insight.
Just as our work to date at Radical Simplicity Inc. has focused on building capacity in organizations by listening, learning and teaching, we are building our own capability and capacity as a consulting practice by being a learning organization and adapting our approach based on expert knowledge.
What could be better work for a human resources professional? What could be better for us as consultants to organizations that are pursuing grand dreams? To be:
- Facilitators of business strategy using a structural approach
- Experts in developing disciplined leaders and managing performance truthfully
- Architects of aligned people and learning systems that finely balance workload/capacity
It is radically simple.
Businesses are nothing more or nothing less than a community of free men and free women. Today, more than ever before in history, we are all truly volunteers, choosing where we will work based on our own aspirations and values and how they align with the business.
What if business was consciously structured for people to achieve their highest aspirations, live their values, and discover their best self?
Let Radical Simplicity Inc. help you structure your business for results.