Have you ever worked for a company where everything took way too long to get done?

I have, and my hunch tells me that it is the reality of most companies. As companies grow, organizational charts become more complex, and recurring meetings become the norm. It gets worse when consensus is required to make every decision while no one wants to commit, so decisions drag on for quarters.

Having a process can be good and, in most cases, is required for large organizations, but too much of it leads to inefficient execution, lower employee morale, and uncompetitiveness.

Steve Jobs said it best:

People get confused, companies get confused, when they start getting bigger they wanna replicate their initial success, and a lot of them think, well, somehow there is a kind of magic in the process on how that success was created within the company and they start to institutionalize process across the company, and before very long, people are getting very confused that the process is the content.

That’s ultimately the downfall of IBM. IBM had the best people process in the world but they just forgot about the content.

I've found myself contributing to the problem by adding more processes. But, through mentorship, I found a straightforward trick to ground myself and remediate the issue before it is too late - wasting other's people time.

Always ask yourself, "so what?"

Asking yourself, "so what?" cuts through the bullshit like a sharp knife. It is like when you are about to eat a chocolate cake, and your brain goes, "really!? are you going to kid yourself and eat this when you said you were going to commit to a healthier lifestyle."

Here are some examples:

• Presentations: Asking "so what?" may decrease a slide deck from 5 slides to 1. The quicker context and supporting with that to the so what, the faster you will achieve consensus and reach a decision.

• Meetings: If you are about to get into a recurring group meeting and there is no "so what," cancel the meeting. You are doing a disservice to your colleagues. Don't fall prey to a commitment bias; even if you set the meeting the week before, and it is about to start, cancel the appointment.

This may sound too simple, but as Occam's Razor says: "the simplest solution is almost always the best." Asking "so what?" can be a solid antidote to negative organizational processes and a great booster to better content.