More People, More Problems.

“Many hands make light work.”

“Two heads are better than one.”

“The more, the merrier.”

“There’s strength in numbers.”

…Except…when it comes to process.

The more people that are involved in a process or system, the more complex and difficult it becomes. Why?

Think about it this way. You are making plans with a friend to go out for dinner. You compare calendars and find a time after going back and forth a few times. Now imagine you are making plans with three friends. After comparing three different calendars and going back and forth way too many times, you decide to touch base again next month to find a time instead.

When we are coordinating with one other person, even with only a handful of people, the complexity is relatively low. When we all of a sudden are trying to figure out how to coordinate and run a process with twice, three, four times as many people, things fall apart.

So while many hands may make light work, they certainly also make it more complicated. This is the place many businesses find themselves in as they grow. They start with their core team where everyone does a little bit of everything and while things might be stretched, they function pretty well. Then they start adding people and all of a sudden things start falling through the cracks. Everyone is lightly confused about who is responsible for what tasks. Not everyone is on the same page about projects, order statuses, and what is actually urgent and needs to be prioritized.

What this means is that as your team grows, process becomes even more critical, but it also becomes more complicated because you have more people involved.

The best thing you can do is to keep things as simple as possible. What helps with that? Process, but simple, straightforward processes where it is very clear who does what, when and why.

As you continue growing, do yourself a favor and “keep it simple, stupid” 😉