Accidental Light

The first time I came across this was when I was asked what my top, unmissable priorities were. I reeled off about ten - they all seemed equally important. The reply came back very quickly: “I don’t care about that - what’s your top three. You can’t do all those. What are the three things that could get you sacked if you don’t do them” .. or something like that. It was great advice, if you concentrate hard on too many things you won’t get any of them done. Three seems about right - maybe you can cope with a few more.

Seven came up more recently when we re-organised - JP mandated in each part of the management organisation there should be no more than seven people. He may have worn six and possibly eight but no way nine. It works - too few people and there is not enough knowledge and experience to get the right things worked out. Too many people and everyone starts playing for position, talking up their own book, nobody gets heard, nothing gets done. Seven is about right. It works. Honest. If you have more than seven people on the management team re-organise, divide, split, re-think. Whatever. ‘Cos it won’t work with more.

At college we were taught that the human brain cannot manage more than six (was it, or seven) concurrent things. Very useful to know when designing GUIs or constructing management teams.

On a related point, even if you are organised around the magic of seven the organisation itself and as a whole will be very much larger. If you need this organisation to act somewhat like a single organism (and you should) the communication needs to be extremely simple and repeated often. Say … oh .. about three themes .That seems to work. It sounds very patronising and Janet & John but the organisation as a whole doesn’t care about you and generally doesn’t listen - it is far too busy working. Far too many things going on in its head. Far more important things to do.

So pick three themes. Express them in as simple a manner as the theme allows and repeat at every opportunity.