Why you SHOULD boil the ocean... (but not in those words)

The term "don't boil the ocean" is a favourite for leaders and consultants alike when it comes to strategy. It is also a term that invites eye rolls and immediately loses its audience due to its pretentious overuse around the boardroom table.

The concept of the term is intended to convince a client or organization to narrow their focus on specific areas, aspects or outcomes so as not to make things too complex or impossible (like literally boiling the ocean). However, as much as I am an advocate of keeping things simple, I am also an advocate of:

1. Identifying weaknesses and underlying causes that might be causing an organization to repeat the same problems over and over, or hold them back from successfully realizing desired outcomes,

2. Embracing the interconnectedness and complexities of an organization, and

3. Understanding the fact that every organization employs people, and where people are involved, things often get messy and well...complex.

One thing is for certain, gone are the days of inputs and ouptuts, widgets, nuts and bolts. Our economy is dominated by globalization, knowedge-based activities, and now the addition of social media, artifical intelligence and constant access to information our tiny little brains were not built to manage. That means our problems become more complex, our environment is increasingly more difficult to navigate and the needle is constantly moving. Strategic plans are being built for much shorter time frames than the usual 5 - 10 year targets and organizations are trying to manage environmental factors changing in 3 month cycles rather than 2 or 3 year cycles.

Variables are changing daily, employees are arriving and leaving, changing careers and switching focus faster than ever before, meaning that the constant cycle of staff through an organization are also constantly introducing new and different ways of thinking, solving problems and changing the view and strategy of an organization.

But primarily, organizations are complex in and of themselves. McKinsey's 7-S framework is an effective representation of these complexities. McKinsey's 7-S framework depicts seven aspects of an organization:

1. Structure

2. Strategy

3. System

4. Shared Values

5. Skill

6. Style, and

7. Staff

I've linked the framework above if you're interested in learning more, but long story short, the model illustrates that the seven aspects of an organization are interconnected and having a weakness in or changing a single area will inevitably impact another whether or positive or negative.

For example, one organization restructured three times in an eighteen month period and couldn't figure out why performance wasn't improving and morale was so low. In response, I was called in to restructure again to find the appropriate organizational structure. By the first round of interviews, it was clear that staffing resources were sufficient and the staff were appropriately skilled for their work, but leadership style didn't match the culture of the organization, there was no clear strategy with most of leadership working in conflict with each other, and not only could no one tell me the values of the organization, morale was so bad some even said the organization didn't have any values at all! Further, the system (how work was moved around, communication, decision making authrotiy, etc) was not well defined and people were constantly tripping over each other because no one knew exactly who was responsible for what after all of the restructures they had just lived through.

In a case like this, narrowing the focus and trying not to boil the ocean would have left the organization continuing to churn through changes that resembled a bad game of whack a mole. Constantly trying to fix one issue in isolation of another and having another pop us somewhere else as a result.

So, in some cases, it might be advisable to "boil the ocean", but for the love of all things holy, use plain language and put boil the ocean to rest.