The simplification of anything is always sensational.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
On a recent plant tour, one of our clients noted that you must work very hard to make things easy. He explained that it takes an enormous amount of effort and careful thought to strip away the complexity of his product so that clients and partners can identify with and understand his product and work with him to improve it.
How do we apply this principle of aggressive simplification to our community and our economic development efforts and organizations? How do we strip away layers of bureaucracy so that ideas can be turned into businesses, and opportunities can be turned into contracts? How do we melt away the impairments of our educational system and simply educate and train our workforce for the careers of today and tomorrow? How do we design our cities so that they are more “useable” for people, families, and businesses?
Perhaps this week we can take a hard look at our services and see where we can remove complexity in our processes and offerings so that we can make doing business in our region even easier. A few suggestions:
- Ask a customer—or a few—to honestly tell you if there is an area of your service that seems unduly complicated.
- Empower a small internal team to look at a slow or complex piece of our business and ask them to radically simplify it.
Happy simplifying!
–Kenny McDonald
One Columbus Update
- This week, the One Columbus team is in California to attend the Industrial Asset Management Council’s Spring 2015 Professional Forum and to meet with companies in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas.
- Back at home, our team will join the U.S. Department of Commerce, JobsOhio, the Ohio Development Services Agency and the Ohio Aerospace Institute to introduce Chicago International Trade Commissioners Association members to the Ohio marketplace with a focus on aerospace manufacturing. Learn more here.
- The Columbus Chamber 10th Annual Government Day is next Friday, May 8. The event will feature a keynote address from U.S. Congressman Pat Tiberi, as well as opportunities to learn about business-critical topics and engage in discussions with public policy thought leaders. Click here to register.