How to connect with simplicity

You might be thinking, what is Confluity?
You wouldn’t be alone.
In this blog, I hope you’ll find Confluity, and why it’s important for you.

Finding Confluity – In a nutshell

To find Confluity is to connect with what matters the most. That is where the name comes from:

• Con – connecting
• fluity – simplicity and flow

The idea is when you connect with simplicity, you deliver and enjoy work more.

You could call this idea the vision or the purpose for Confluity (the company).

How to find Confluity

Connecting with simplicity means freeing yourself from complexity. You can achieve this by managing your work not with long textbooks or operating manuals, but instead with simple rules for success.

Here’s how:

1. Start with your job to be done
2. Define simple rules for success for that job
3. Borrow and practise simple rules from others
4. Repeat and learn

Start with your Job

When I talk about a job, I am not describing your role or the activities you undertake. What I am asking you to describe is the problem to be solved or the outcome to be achieved. Your first step is to define your job, or jobs.

For example:

• Being a CEO is not the job. The job may be to deliver a strategy.
• Being a project manager is not the job. The job is to deliver a project.
• Being a manager is not the job. The job is to enable others to deliver.

By focusing on the outcome, not the role, you will find people connecting more at all levels because you are talking about something tangible, concrete, and practical.

How to Define Your Simple Rules for Success

Once you know the job, the next step is to define your simple rules for success.

A practical way to find them is to ask:

• When I have delivered this job before, from my experience, what were the most important things I needed to do?
• Or, from observing others, what were the most important things they did?

Generally, rules should be short, evocative, and carry a lot of feeling. If you don’t feel it, it probably means you haven’t experienced it yet. If that is the case, it is not yet your rule, it is a slogan.

When writing your rules, ask yourself this: “Would I bet my career on what I am saying?”

If you answer “yes”, then you have probably found one of your rules.

If you hear a rule from someone else and it feels like a slogan, it may simply be that you haven’t experienced it yet.

Examples:

• Keep it simple
• Don’t sweat the small stuff
• Start with the end in mind
• If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
• “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” – Mike Tyson

When you work in this way, you tap into simplicity. Instead of focusing on long complicated methods, or relying purely on intuition, you begin to codify your simple rules for success.

Do this, and like me, I am sure you will find you are connecting with simplicity. You’ll find Confluity, and it will make your work feel calmer, clearer, and more enjoyable.

It gets really fun when you start asking others for their simple rules and practising them yourself.

That, in essence, is what Confluity is here to help you do.

This email series will continue to explore this idea by looking at different jobs and the rules that help people succeed at them.