Conquering Complexity in Your Business:How Wal-Mart, Toyota, and Other Top Companies Are Breaking Through the Ceiling on Profits and Growth

Over the past two decades, many businesses have created genuine economic value by improving their processes. But in many cases, companies that focused on cutting costs or improving their quality have hit a ceiling in the amount of profits they could generate.

Where did this ceiling come from? Recent research and the experience of consultants Michael L. George and Stephen A. Wilson of The George Group lead to a startling conclusion: The biggest hurdle to profitable growth is complexity.

As our summary of their book Conquering Complexity explains, every business has too much complexity in something. Maybe the company offers more products than its customers want, more services than the market can support, or too many ways of accomplishing the same output.

Here's a guarantee: Somewhere in your business, you have one of these problems. You have too much complexity that is draining profitability and growth, or you have too little complexity, so you‘re missing opportunities to serve your customers. Either way, complexity is imposing a cost on your business.

In order to conquer complexity, you need to identify opportunities, quantify the size of those opportunities, and decide which to pursue. Taking the time to understand complexity and to develop strategies for conquering it will help you to improve your ability to grow profit, revenue, and shareholder value.