Here is an excerpt from an article written by Ron Ashkenas with Lisa Bodell for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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Over the past several years we have heard hundreds of managers talk about the negative impact of complexity on both productivity and workplace morale. This message has been reinforced by the findings of major CEO surveys conducted by IBM and KPMG [PDF], both of which identified complexity as a key business challenge.

Agreeing on complexity as a problem is one thing, but doing something about it is quite another — particularly for managers who are already over-worked, stressed, and can barely keep up with their current workload. In fact, the Catch-22 of complexity is that most managers don’t feel that they have the time to focus on it: Having the problem precludes the ability to solve it.

With this dilemma in mind, we think it’s important for managers to have a strategic framework that they can use to address complexity in their own areas, at their own pace, in their own ways. So to that end, we would like to offer a “simple” seven-step simplification strategy. While we present these sequentially, they can be implemented in any order, depending on where you might be able to make the greatest difference most quickly. Over time however, it’s important to do all seven so that simplicity becomes a core capability of your organization and not just a one-time project.

[Here are the first two of seven strategies recommended.]

o Clear the underbrush. An easy starting point for simplification is to get rid of stupid rules and low-value activities, time-wasters that exist in abundance in most organizations. Look, for example, at how many people need to review and sign off on expense reports or small purchases; or how many times slide decks need to be reviewed before they are presented. If you can shed a few simple tasks, you will create bandwidth to focus on more substantial simplification opportunities.

o Take an outside-in perspective. Simplification should be driven by the need to add value to your customers, either internal or external. So a key step in the process is to proactively clarify what your customers (internal or external) really want and what you can do to make them more successful. One manager, for example, took her team to visit a customer plant so that people could see how their product was actually used, which gave them ideas about how to improve it.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Lisa Bodell is the founder and CEO of FutureThink and the author of Kill the Company.

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting, and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization< /strong>. His latest book is Simply Effective.