If It is Complex, Something is Wrong

A maze is impressive. A straight line is not. And yet, almost every great solution in history, the one you still use every day, is a straight line that someone worked very hard to build. Complexity is usually a sign of confusion, not sophistication. When a process is hard to explain, it’s often because nobody has done the thinking to make it simple yet.

We often confuse “complicated” with “important.” A beautifully convoluted slide, a multi-layered process, a system that only three people understand: these can feel like proof of intelligence. Usually they’re proof that something needs to be cleaned up. The hardest intellectual work in any field is making something simple without making it wrong.

Simple is not the starting point. It’s the finishing line.

Before you add another step, another field, another tool, another meeting, ask: is there a simpler way? Most of the time there is, and we just didn’t try hard enough to find it. Simple systems scale. Simple explanations stick. Simple processes get followed. And simple products are the ones people actually use.