For a long time, it has been a quest of mine to try to take subjects that have been made complex (sometimes without good cause) and make them simple. I believe just about anybody can take the simple and make it complex, but if we can take the complex and boil it down to simple nuggets of truth – that’s a great thing. I suppose I got it from my dad. With a wink and a grin, he loved to share to that old KISS saying… Keep it simple, stupid.

Simplify and Streamline

In our super-busy personal lives, and super-busy business lives, we need simple nuggets of truth that we can wrap our minds around. We’ve got plenty of complexity and far too many distractions in the world already. Let’s aim to simplify and streamline. On that note, I was very impressed with SAP’s new Chief-of-all-things-Cloud, Lars Dalgaard, as he starts to set SAP’s focus cloud solutions. He recently explained SAP’s cloud focus this way. He said that businesses need world-class cloud-based functionality for

• People
• Money
• Customers
• Suppliers

How simple is that? Don’t those four simple terms summarize what all of our business activities boil down to? It’s all about people, money, customers and suppliers. How brilliant! As a specialist in the human capital management area, I’m thrilled to see people show up first in that list. I’ve been waiting for this day for 14+ years. People is first in the list because that’s exactly where it belongs. Without the right people in the right positions with the right skills there’s no money, there are no customers and there are no suppliers. And that’s what it’s all about:

• Finding, keeping and growing the right people to allow our businesses to execute brilliantly
• Create innovative supplier relationships
• Win customers for life
• Make lots of money

Does it get any simpler? I intend to blog periodically about this fundamental need: to find, keep and grow the right people. We’ll examine new developments, trends and practices. We’ll try to sort out what’s hype and what’s real. We’ll try to tackle the subjects that keep VPs of HR awake at night. Most of all, I’ll try to toss the complex and keep it simple. We’re just too busy for anything else.