By Douglas Kruger
LAST week, Dr Andrew McLaughlin, the government’s interim chief executive, spoke at the Chamber of Commerce’s January lunch event, arguing that the Island is over-regulated. He is achingly right.
The consequences of too many rules, for any complex human system, include, but are not limited to:
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High attrition rates among proactive people, such as the youth and entrepreneurs, who take their skills elsewhere.
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A consequent narrowing of cultural vitality, as high-performing human-capital leaves, while those who passively accept over-regulation, having no intention of making or growing anything new, remain.
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Significant additional cost on any and all projects, with such costs either handed on to consumers, greatly increasing the cost of living, or simply prohibiting necessary work from ever taking place.
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The subsequent repelling of investment, given a hostile and expensive business climate.
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Contribution to a “pressure cooker” culture, in which everything is frustrating all the time. Nothing new and necessary can be built or achieved. People conduct their daily lives beset by inadequate infrastructure, paired with the seeming impossibility of change, even as our numbers grow, and the enabling latticework of civilisation, inadequate 20 years ago, becomes further overburdened by the day. Witness merely the traffic chaos this month when just a few roads were closed simultaneously.
Rather than harp on about how all of this indicates that we should #BuildTheTunnel, let us zoom out for an aerial view, and consider the problem conceptually. Assuming you agree with Dr McLaughlin’s thesis – and I do – what frameworks might one practically apply to a reduction of regulation?
There are many available. For instance: “No new rule, without the removal of two old ones.”
Or, alternatively, a one-off national call for submissions, after which the rules most commonly cited as problematic must be stress-tested, to determine whether they provide more value than they destroy. There are several other approaches besides.
But I propose this model as our most useful starting point: “Empathise/clarify/distil.”
In the book Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity, branding expert Alan Siegel and clarity specialist Irene Etzkorn provide ingenious guidelines for simplifying anything. They have proved their system repeatedly in the real world, even managing to dramatically reduce the number of pages in tax forms for the US government. Here is how their system works: begin by empathising with the user. Who must make use of the system? In Jersey’s case, who is affected by the rules and bureaucracy?
Now, imagine that you are on their side. In a representative democracy, this should be the default position. Yet politicians lose sight of it.
To stress the point, you cannot do this remotely, from a government office. You must go there and meet those who will be affected. You must see how hard it is to do anything, as a result of your rules. You must view the receipts for the extra cost with your own eyes, and hear the human stories of delay directly from the mouths of people who just cannot afford to comply with what you believed was an imperative. In other words, you must show genuine care for the people you were elected to represent. Indeed, show more care for them than you do for your own bureaucracy. This seems surprisingly difficult for most politicians to do.
Key to this first step is that, instead of covering all bases for your own interests, and instead of insisting the user follow your prescriptions, you should find out how the user actually interacts with them. Observe the problems, the shortfalls, the difficulties and confusion, all through the lens of empathy.
The next step is to distil. Boil it down and customise it to meet needs. In our case, the needs of the Island. Jersey doesn’t need “vast and comprehensive bureaucracy”. It needs to get things done, with a useful minimum of checks and balances. Ask: “What is the heart and soul of this thing? What does the user want and need? Where are the harms in an overly comprehensive system?”
Step three is to clarify. Having distilled a thing down to what is truly wanted and needed, lead with that, and let the rest recede into the background, or – shock, horror – disappear completely.
Here is an example, and it is visual in nature. Imagine a video camera that lacks user empathy, and hasn’t been distilled and clarified. It might have 30 buttons on the back, of equal size and shape. But a device that has undergone this process will foreground and emphasise only the three or four buttons most commonly used. These will be bigger, shaped differently, and marked in unique colours. All the remaining functions will then be pushed into the background; available, but not in such a way as to cause clutter.
This process works on tangible products, but it can also be used for anything. You can use it to simplify internal paperwork in a corporate company. You can use it to simplify legislation. You can use it to free up Jersey, so that we realise our dormant potential, and prosper.
Start by empathising with the person who must use it. Distil it down to what is truly needed, and discard the rest. Clarify it so it follows an easy, logical path, with as few steps, hurdles and barriers as possible. Do it only after you have met the actual user, and genuinely understand the problem.
Yes, you will have to sacrifice comprehensiveness to win simplicity. But this is a worthwhile trade. The difference it would make to the total prosperity of the Island would be awesome. I suspect it would be well beyond what many currently believe is even possible.
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Douglas Kruger is an award-winning professional speaker, and the author of books including Own Your Industry and They’re Your Rules, Break Them. He lives in St Helier.
