Complicated? Keep It Simple!

Have you ever wished that things - managing and running an organization, dealing with others, dealing with information overload, decision making, running your life, whatever - are simpler? Of course you have - we all have! Unfortunately, in many cases, we did to ourselves the complications that we face. I can't tell you how to decide but I can give you what others who have come before us have to say about it.

• William Ockham, 14th century logician and to whom Occam's Razor is attributed said that "all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."
• Albert Einstein's maxim states that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
• Antoine de Saint Exupéry's "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
• Elliott Sober's "The simplest theory is the more informative one, in the sense that less information is required in order to answer one's questions."
• Isaac Newton's "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."
• Thomas Aquinas argued that "if a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several."
• Leonardo Da Vinci's "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

You do not have to choose or make things more difficult than they need to be. Choose simple, but not simplistic, assumptions over complicated ones and you won't be entangled in a never-ending but futile struggle to prove yourself right.

Jerry Yang, founder and former CEO of Yahoo, employed the complicated matrix management system, embroiled the company in endless reorganizations, and produced not so pretty results. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, made a number of restructurings at the company and failed - the company was recently bought by Oracle.

For some folks, simplicity appears effortless. Lou Gerstner executed one of the most challenging turnarounds in business history by reversing the planned disaggregation of IBM and refocusing the company on IT services. His new vision for Big Blue was brilliant, but it was also simple and elegant, requiring far less restructuring than the previous plan (S.Tobac, BusinessNet).

Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora - it is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer. Next time, given a choice, but not to the point of inadequacy, choose the simpler path - it usually is the better choice.