Radical Simplification
Your processes were designed for a world that no longer exists.
Radical Simplification helps enterprise leaders achieve step-change improvements in operational performance — not by optimising what exists today, but by challenging the assumptions it was built on.
Get in touchYou have tried everything.
Lean. Six Sigma. Continuous improvement programmes. Restructuring. Digital transformation. The returns have been shrinking for years. Every productivity gain that could be squeezed has been achieved.
Think of it like driving a car. If you want to go faster, the instinct is to press the accelerator harder. That works until the pedal is flat to the floor. At that point, pressing harder achieves nothing. The time has come to change gear.
Every process is built on a set of implicit assumptions about who the customer is, how decisions get made, how work flows, and what quality means. Gary Hamel, one of the founders of Strategos, called these management orthodoxies — rules like “every project gets its own resource plan” or “approval requires sign-off from three levels of management” that are so ingrained they are treated as fixed rules rather than choices. Most improvement programmes take those assumptions as a given. They never ask whether the current process should exist in its current form.
That is why teams keep solving the wrong problem.
When the design is the problem, optimisation is not the answer.
A major consumer goods company had spent years compressing a packaging design process. The theoretical minimum cycle time was four days. The real-world cycle was 21 weeks. The team had spent years compressing those weeks through continuous improvement and kept hitting the same ceiling — not because they lacked skill, but because the process was built on an assumption that had become obsolete: that packaging existed to respond to brand requests.
Changing that single assumption unlocked what years of improvement work could not. The new process was built on an entirely different set of principles.
The same logic applies to deploying AI for productivity gains. Automating a process designed around obsolete principles will only lock the dysfunction in at a higher speed. It produces a faster broken thing — not a step change.
Redesign first, then automate. Build the process AI should run — not the process it happens to inherit.
Principles-Based Redesign
Instead of asking how to optimise the current design, we ask what the design should be — and work backwards from there. The method draws on 30 years of applying innovation techniques to reimagine how enterprises operate.
We look beyond the formal process map to what people are actually trying to accomplish — the workarounds, the informal fixes, the deviations that have become standard practice. Then we ask the question that unlocks the design logic: what would your organisation have to believe to be running this process the way it does today? This surfaces the underlying assumptions, including the implicit ones that have never been addressed in traditional improvement programmes.
Each assumption is tested against forces of change affecting the context: technology shifts, AI capabilities, competitive dynamics, and evolving stakeholder expectations. We look at analogues — organisations that run similar functions on fundamentally different assumptions. Many orthodoxies that were sound ten years ago do not survive this scrutiny. The ones that don’t become the target for redesign.
Starting from a new set of principles, we design the future system. Process, roles, metrics, and decision rights all shift. AI is designed as the execution layer for the new operating model — not layered onto the old one. The goal is a fundamentally different system, not a faster version of the one you have.
A beta design is piloted in rapid cycles, refined, and scaled. We build the capability inside your organisation to own and evolve the system after we leave. We deliver a repeatable approach that prevents long-term consultancy dependency.
What Radical Simplification delivers
Based on work with global enterprises across consumer goods, energy, and other industries:
Where the method has proved itself
Packaging design: from 21 weeks to a fundamentally different system
A major consumer goods company had spent years compressing a packaging design process through continuous improvement. The real-world cycle was 21 weeks against a theoretical minimum of four days. The breakthrough came from challenging the core assumption — that packaging exists to respond to brand requests — and replacing it with a market mechanism: tiered offerings with published prices and timelines that informed brand managers could buy from.
Cycle times collapsed. The mix of project requests changed. Decision rights moved closer to the work. Consensus meetings disappeared.
Major capital projects: from compliance gates to real portfolio management
A leading global energy company’s major capital projects — offshore platforms, LNG processing plants — routinely ran years late and billions of dollars over budget. An industry-standard model designed for a slower, more predictable era had been extensively optimised.
Principles-Based Redesign shifted the system from a compliance and gate-management model to one focused on the actual content and commercial substance of projects, with a portfolio of real options built to manage interrelated risks. New principles drove new tools, new roles, and new decision routines.
Ready to ask the harder question?
Radical Simplification is for companies that have run the standard playbooks — Lean, Six Sigma, restructuring, and AI pilots — and are ready to ask a harder question: not how to make the current process better, but whether the current process should exist in its current form at all.
The work typically begins with identifying a high-priority process that has already received years of attention and is still underperforming. That starting point proves the model. The approach and capability then extend across the enterprise.
It is not the right approach for organisations looking for incremental gains. It is the right approach for those who need a fundamentally different answer.
Hitting the ceiling on a critical process and out of tactical answers?
If your organisation has run out of tactical answers, let’s talk about what it would take to change the design.
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