Like a successful business, most successful software products develop over a period of time.
After many rounds of feature enhancements, the code behind the scenes can look a bit of a mess.
So, every so often the software developer will ‘refactor’ – whilst ensuring the functionality is maintained, they will clean up the code, simplifying it by removing any unnecessary complexity to ensure that performance is optimized and it is easily understood by anyone that comes to work on it in the future.
Businesses should use the principle of refactoring too.
Because complexity creeps in.
And as Richard Branson said: “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.”
As your business grows, processes, rules and procedures should periodically be the subject of refactoring.
Because processes, rules and procedures that were useful once may no longer serve a purpose or be the most effective way of getting a result.
For example, your internal communication process should be the subject of refactoring … to keep things as simple as they can be.
It’s easy for the number of reports and meetings to multiple unnecessarily as employee count grows.
Uninspiring reports and meetings can drain valuable resources.
And worse still, dampen morale.
So, the purpose and number of reports and meetings should be reviewed at least once per year to ensure that they are still meaningful today.
As a CEO, keeping things simple should be one of your goals because as Edward De Bono put it:
“Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.”
And focused effort is what gets results, don’t you agree?