Modern business is in love with the complex and advanced (and the public service even more so). The ‘strategic' is better than the ‘operational'. Frontline managers want to do courses aimed at company directors, rather than basic management courses. Incomprehensibility is taken as a sign of genius. But are we forgetting something important?
In sport, it's recognised that focusing on the basics is key to excellence. The best teams spend more time refining fundamental skills like passing and catching than learning complex new ‘plays'. Martial artists regard moving smoothly and in balance as a surer sign of proficiency than any showy high kick. Sports like golf or autoracing seem from the outside relatively simple in terms of the basic movements and strategies, but the skilled professional outperforms the beginner to an astounding degree. What makes the difference between top and mediocre performance? Ten thousand small, seemingly insignificant refinements, honed over ten thousand hours of focused practice. The same principle applies to your profession and your business.
Business is not the only profession which sometimes loses sight of the fundamentals in pursuit of the grandiose. Education is notoriously entranced by esoteric, grand-sounding, and often somewhat vague ‘theories' and fads, while basic principles of effective teaching are routinely ignored, or unknown altogether. Psychology is perhaps too much of a soft target to even mention.
What are the fundamentals in your profession? They're the skills that you draw on practically every hour of every day. In management, they include things like giving clear instructions, teaching people the basic skills they need to do their jobs, checking things are being done right, and treating people well. In complex, high-technology fields like aviation, surgery, and nuclear power generation, accidents are often caused by failures in the basics (clear, concise communication; staying aware of what's going on; listening to others in the team). For a writer, writing simply, precisely, and succinctly is a finer art than learning how to throw every word in the dictionary with ten syllables or more into a short story. If you work in HR and you can't pay people the right amount, on time, no-one wants to hear about you being their ‘strategic business partner'. And essential time management, communication and interpersonal skills are key to most modern jobs.
It's not easy to improve the basics, whether it be in your professional skills, how you run your business, your sport, or any other area of your life. Your worst enemies are arrogance, complacency, and impatience, which are scourges of our age. But focused attention to the basics is the key to high performance.
As the politically correct like to phrase it - Keep It Simple Sweetheart.
