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One of my coworkers coined this phrase to sum up one of our biggest challenges at work.
I am new to the company, and we are both and a team with lots of internal customers, in different roles.
A lot of my job is troubleshooting, then recommending and implementing better processes.
When I am looking into stuff or observing the current workflow, I find a lot of things are unnecessarily complicated.
As my coworker described, we have lots of smart people. And some smart people like to prove they are smart by making complex stuff only they understand. This leaves people like us, the newbies, scratching our heads at why there are so many needless steps. And trying to convince everyone to learn KISS - keep it simple stupid!
Is "smart people syndrome" prevalent at your workplace?
Complex stuff may need to be complex...I know a lot of managers who THINK everything should be easy and simple but the world isn't always that way. So complicated stuff needs to be documented so everyone that needs to understand it can, not just one person who may get hit by a bus someday. You can't simplify until you understand if it needs to be - get these smart people to explain then you'll know what can be simplified or what just needs to be documented the heck out of.
One of my coworkers coined this phrase to sum up one of our biggest challenges at work.
I am new to the company, and we are both and a team with lots of internal customers, in different roles.
A lot of my job is troubleshooting, then recommending and implementing better processes.
When I am looking into stuff or observing the current workflow, I find a lot of things are unnecessarily complicated.
As my coworker described, we have lots of smart people. And some smart people like to prove they are smart by making complex stuff only they understand. This leaves people like us, the newbies, scratching our heads at why there are so many needless steps. And trying to convince everyone to learn KISS - keep it simple stupid!
Is "smart people syndrome" prevalent at your workplace?
It's not "smart people syndrome" at all. It's job protection. A person includes a step that involves this person to authorize, review, flip this or that switch, stamp, etc. when it's not needed because, otherwise, THEY are not needed.
Are you familiar with value stream mapping? Lean principles and the tool to identify waste? All these inefficiencies can be quickly identified. It's your job to recommend and implement better processes - so you have a job to do, get to it.
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41,936 posts, read 36,962,945 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jade408
I'll give you an example of a process I will simplify with needless steps. Imagine you have an outlet. And you have a power strip. The power strip is connected to the outlet directly. The power strip has 6 slots and you have two items to plug in.
Now imagine, that instead of plugging the two things in the power strip, someone plugged another power strip into the first power strip, and then plugged in 6 extension cords to connect the two items. The two items are located right next to the power strip and do not need to be relocated - there is sufficient slack in the cords to plug directly in the wall.
Then your housemate comes over and wants to unplug one of the items and moves it, and has to sort through all of the wires to figure out what is going on.
This is pretty much what I have going on in some of the systems. There are unnecessary power strips and extension cords that aren't being used. There is space to grow with the single power strip.
That's an analogy that is pretty useless. Without knowing the why it was done that way from the beginning, there is no way to critique the process.
People that jump in at the end and go "well the way we are doing things doesn't make any sense!" are generally bad employees or managers in my opinion. The best ones keep quiet, learn why things are the way they are, spend a good amount of time in the weeds learning and observing, and then provide feedback. Those that jump in are almost always wrong from what I've seen.
Most of the problems are caused by stupid managers who are working above their level of competence. They can't tell the difference between a one-time problem and a systemic failure, so they make arbitrary rules not related to the actual work flow. They are trapped in a world they don't understand, and just make random problems for everybody in the organization.
That's an analogy that is pretty useless. Without knowing the why it was done that way from the beginning, there is no way to critique the process.
People that jump in at the end and go "well the way we are doing things doesn't make any sense!" are generally bad employees or managers in my opinion. The best ones keep quiet, learn why things are the way they are, spend a good amount of time in the weeds learning and observing, and then provide feedback. Those that jump in are almost always wrong from what I've seen.
I had the luxury of doing nothing and auditing / interviewing before being responsible for stuff. So basically I spent a lot of time figuring out what the ideal state should be with the stakeholders.
Now I get to start making it happen!
Quote:
Originally Posted by reneeh63
Complex stuff may need to be complex...I know a lot of managers who THINK everything should be easy and simple but the world isn't always that way. So complicated stuff needs to be documented so everyone that needs to understand it can, not just one person who may get hit by a bus someday. You can't simplify until you understand if it needs to be - get these smart people to explain then you'll know what can be simplified or what just needs to be documented the heck out of.
This is one of the other problems. There is undocumented complex stuff. No one knows why it is setup the way it is. I am now responsible for fixing/troubleshooting all of it. So it is in my best interest to make sure it is understandable by both me and the rest of the team.
Back when I first started working in this industry, I would always question why we had to do certain repetitive and seemingly pointless steps in our calculations and reports before we turn them in.
Now that I'm a manager myself, I can't stand it when the guys working under me insist on skipping these steps.
For example, one of the requirements is spelling out everything so that anyone can read it 5 years from now. Even if it's 1 + 1 = 2, I want to see 1 unit (page 4 line 7) + 1 unit (page 12 line 16) = 2 units. Why? Because it may be obvious to the person doing the calculations but it's not so obvious to the person checking the work and processing them. I'm not a mind reader. I'm not psychic, either. This is engineering work, not a scavenger hunt.
One of my coworkers coined this phrase to sum up one of our biggest challenges at work.
I am new to the company, and we are both and a team with lots of internal customers, in different roles.
A lot of my job is troubleshooting, then recommending and implementing better processes.
When I am looking into stuff or observing the current workflow, I find a lot of things are unnecessarily complicated.
As my coworker described, we have lots of smart people. And some smart people like to prove they are smart by making complex stuff only they understand. This leaves people like us, the newbies, scratching our heads at why there are so many needless steps. And trying to convince everyone to learn KISS - keep it simple stupid!
Is "smart people syndrome" prevalent at your workplace?
No, but we just had a "Info" that due to a new "Upper level Tech" we had to go back to an old way of reporting.
Not harder, just more time consuming. So some "Smart People" do dumb things too.
From my experience, people who make things unnecessarily complicated usually fall into one of three categories:
1. Not-so-smart people who are just trying to act smart.
2. People who simply don't know what they're doing.
3. People who are bored because they aren't assigned enough actual work.
To that you can add 4. over-educated programmers who refuse to use existing software "packages" that can solve their clients' problems with much easier to use, and perhaps familiar, software. I don't think that makes them smart, either.
One of my coworkers coined this phrase to sum up one of our biggest challenges at work.
I am new to the company, and we are both and a team with lots of internal customers, in different roles.
A lot of my job is troubleshooting, then recommending and implementing better processes.
When I am looking into stuff or observing the current workflow, I find a lot of things are unnecessarily complicated.
As my coworker described, we have lots of smart people. And some smart people like to prove they are smart by making complex stuff only they understand. This leaves people like us, the newbies, scratching our heads at why there are so many needless steps. And trying to convince everyone to learn KISS - keep it simple stupid!
Is "smart people syndrome" prevalent at your workplace?
Not prevalent and in fact does not exist at any place I have ever worked at. If someone is smart or above average smart they usually have nothing to prove, because its obvious and everyone already recognizes it.
More common is newbies who think they are smarter than the average bear. They may or may not be, but in business, these people frequently don't have the experience to back up their smarts. Lots of times experience trumps smarts. Smarts plus experience almost always trumps just smarts.
Anyway, so called complex systems tend to develop overtime as people patch, apply bandaids, to existing systems because not every company can afford to address changes over time with a full overhaul of existing systems. There may also be not so smart or short sighted people in charge of funds to do so and they make the wrong choices with regard to priorities.
Most large complex systems are not owned by one, two or even a few smart people who have a vested interest in keeping them complex.
Troubleshooters/consultants are among the most dangerous people on the planet to businesses/organizations.
I once worked at an organization where the entire system had to be shut down because of a group of world renowned consultants who thought they were smarter than the smart people at the organization knew better how to simplify the complex system. They had beautiful flow charts, power points, presentations to execs etc but they failed to listen to the really smart people in the org who told them their changes wouldn't work and would cause problems.
As a result, the entire org was brought to its knees and finally a smart exec shut the whole system down, sent the consultants back to the drawing board with the smart people in the org. It took months to fix. In the meantime, as many employees as could be had worked overtime and managers had to report to the company cafeteria for overtime after their normal shift to keep things going. The impact on customers was disastrous and the organizations reputation suffered for years.
My best advice to you is that however smart the people you are dealing with, their experience trumps your newbie smarts.
If you are truly smart, you will make sure you understand why things are the way they are, what could go wrong with changes you are recommending, and how they can manage that change.
Because, lets face it the majority of the human race is change averse. And, sometimes the most important part of any change is change management.
[quote=thatguydownsouth;43711049]A lot of this is caused by temporary patches for a bigger problem. Upper management is VERY bad at investing in IT/software because they view it as a necessary evil. Instead of doing a complete ERP overhaul they give a budget so small that small fixes are used. Over time people leave the company and nobody remembers what these little processes were for. This can be prevented through proper documentation (a SOX control).
This is so true, especially when you are trying to match current technology with legacy systems. When the legacy systems are finally replaced or upgraded no one has the time or money to rethink the related processes.
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