My Friend Has an Amazing Ability to Simplify the Complex and Facilitate the Difficult, to the Extent that You Enjoy Studying the Details of a Dry Scientific Subject with Him. You Listen Attentively, Filled with the Pleasure of Knowledge, as He Explains What Was once Difficult to Understand. He Presents it with His Distinctive Methodology of Simplification and Clear Examples, which He Provides Effortlessly and Naturally.
I remembered this friend while contemplating the scene of several entities I had the opportunity to work with or observe their institutional excellence systems, which varied in reaching a high degree of maturity or faced challenges in this field.
I believe my friend’s simplification methodology was a successful treatment that helped achieve excellence, build its system, and support its sustainability with minimal effort and without excessive hardship. This was done by presenting a complete picture of the excellence project well, clarifying its objectives, requirements, and tools, and facilitating their application and practice easily, starting from the top of the institutional pyramid down to its base.
Excellence is a high level that cannot be reached by ambition alone, nor by singing its praises, nor by assigning someone else to build it on behalf of everyone. Progress cannot be made unless everyone understands it and becomes accustomed to using its tools and requirements. This understanding will lead to their realization that achieving it is everyone’s responsibility, and will strengthen their shared belief in its feasibility and the necessity of achieving it.
Reaching a high degree of sustainable institutional performance is an achievable goal, even if some stages or steps seem difficult, ambiguous, or complex to the inexperienced. Undoubtedly, meeting some excellence requirements faces challenges that differ in their causes and sources between entities and requires the opinion of an expert honed by experience. However, the danger lies in the fact that not understanding some requirements and tools or the difficulty of applying them may lead to reluctance, laxity, or providing data that does not serve the main purpose of requesting it. This is a challenge that must be addressed by those responsible for building the excellence system.
Therefore, simplifying the project, clarifying goals and roles, and addressing stakeholders in a language they understand is a successful recipe and an effective means. This includes addressing them in languages they master as well as their mother tongue. The intention of facilitation here is not to be lenient in applying standards, nor to neglect measuring indicators, nor to find robust, tested systems necessary for closing the continuous improvement loop difficult. Rather, the aim is for the excellence project to be easy to understand, applicable, clear in language, and aligned with the capabilities of individuals and units concerned with implementation. They are like the teeth of a key that must harmonize with the lock for the door to open easily, and addressing people according to their understanding is a noble prophetic tradition.
Consider – and to Allah belongs the highest example – the Almighty’s description of His noble book: (And We have certainly made the Quran easy for remembrance, so is there any who will remember?) Contemplate how the most upright statement, the strongest arguments, and the constitution of salvation are described by the Almighty as easy!