#42 - Simplicity
"Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential" - Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
Hello,
Life, work, relationships - everything seems complicated. Why is it so? How can we remove the unnecessary complexity? And when complexity is unavoidable, how can we avoid confusion? A few ideas in this newsletter.
First, there are cases where adding complexity is intentional.
Sometimes, the intentions are bad. We'll not go there, enough to say that unnecessary complexity for the sake of corruption is evil.
Sometimes, complexity starts with a good intention, like risk mitigation. While necessary, some policies and regulations are so over-engineered that it takes an army of lawyers and consultants to make sense of them and an army of compliance officers to oversee their enforcement.
We'll talk about "bullshit jobs" all this unnecessary complexity generates and see how progressive people teams and leaders redefine HR practices.
Sometimes, the origin of complexity can be pure fear. We say or write things in a complicated way because we are afraid to say the truth.
We'll see that simplicity in writing starts with overcoming fear.
Then, complexity can be due to our tendency to solve problems by adding new things instead of subtracting existing features.
We'll see why people systematically overlook subtraction opportunities.
We'll highlight the ideas on simplifying without dumbing down.
Finally, there are cases where we have to admit complexity is unavoidable.
Is complexity bad? Not necessarily. We'll see that while complexity is essential it's confusion that's undesirable.
We'll see that in business, simple ideas may not be easy. Sometimes it takes to rethink the whole ecosystem around a simple idea to unlock its full potential - just as it happened with the idea of a shipping container.
Finally, we'll see how to get your writing simple (Ironically, I am not sure that this newsletter is simple :))
Bullshit Jobs
"A bullshit job is a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the condition of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.
Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be object of indignities; they not only work hard, but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. but at least they know they're doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers - as the sort of people who can just be proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it's all based on a lie - as, indeed, it is."
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by David Graeber
Redefining HR: Policies for the many, not against a few
"When you go back to the origins of the HR, the function was largely driven by compliance and risk mitigation. There was a default lean towards designing policies and procedures with risk aversion as a primary driver.
Modern people teams and leaders take a different approach. Rather than designing policies fuelled by preventing worst-case scenarios, they're rooted in the assumption that you're hiring capable adults who will generally make good decisions. Rather than defaulting to a 'policy against a few' approach, they embrace 'policy for the many' views that assume good intent and deal with bad behavior as individual issues to be addressed individually.
Employees want to be treated like adults - responsible humans capable of making good choices. When burdened with a bureaucratic policy that stifles innovation and impact, employees are less likely to feel empowered and impactful. Resist the urge to over-engineer policies and procedures and watch your employees and organization blossom"
Redefining HR: Transforming People Teams to Drive Business Performance, by Lars Schmidt
We say "It's complicated", even when it isn't
"A common form of complexity is the sophistication of fear. Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, "you don't understand" or, "you don't know the people I know…" "It's complicated," we say, even when it isn't.
We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear.
I'm more interested in the sophistication required to deliver the truth.
Simplicity. Awareness.Beauty.
These take fearlessness. This is, "here it is, I made this, I know you can understand it, does it work for you?"
Our work doesn't have to be obtuse to be important or brave."
The sophistication of truth | Seth's Blog (seths.blog)
Write boldly even when you're afraid
"Each of us would prefer to write with integrity rather than out of fear. but while integrity is in our hearts, fear poisons what we write. Fear destroys clarity and muddies up our writing. You cannot change how you write until you acknowledge it...
Why are you still wasting people's time with writing that is too long? Insecurity. You're afraid to get right to the point, you need to warm up.
The trick is to write boldly even when you are afraid."
Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, by Josh Bernoff
When Subtraction Adds Value
"Imagining ways to introduce change is an essential skill no matter one’s occupation, role, or rank. Across a series of experiments, the authors found that people systematically overlook subtractive changes, instead following their instincts to add. There is nothing inherently wrong with adding. But if it becomes a business’s default path to improvement, that business may be failing to consider a whole class of other opportunities. With subtraction in mind, a designer might rid the app of unnecessary features, a manager might remove barriers to a more inclusive culture, and an advisory board member might suggest divesting from fossil fuels. The good news is that an understanding of the psychology behind subtraction neglect reveals some ways to avoid it."
When Subtraction Adds Value (hbr.org)
How to Simplify Without Dumbing Down?
"To communicate the message in a way that sticks, we often need to strip it down to its core - but what's that exactly? According to the Occam's Razor Principle, the simplest solution is most likely the right one (...)
Layers of complexity can be removed by checking what happens if we get rid of them. Simplicity is what helps the message be understood, and hence taken in. Emotions make it stick.
How to simplify without dumbing down? — Cartoonbase
Maximize Steps Not Taken
I love the story of Amazon’s one-click checkout process told in the book "Effortless" by Greg McKeown. The solution is so obvious in hindsight, yet, until Jeff Bezos came up with the idea, it did not come to mind to anyone working on the checkout process: programmers had been trying to make each step in the online ordering process simpler but never thought to try removing steps to make the process itself simpler.
Here are a few ideas on simplifying from "Effortless":
"No matter how simple the step, it's still easier to take no step.
Not everything needs an extra mile. Going the extra mile in the ways that are essential is one thing. But adding unnecessary, superficial embellishments is quite another. being asked to do X isn't a good enough reason to do Y. Resist the temptation to add unnecessary extras.
Start with zero. if there are processes in your life that seem to involve an inordinate number of steps, try starting from zero. Then see if you can find your way back to those same results, only take fewer steps.
Maximize the steps not taken."
Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most, by Greg McKeown
Is Complexity Bad?
"Someone else's kitchen looks complicated and confusing, but your own kitchen does not. The same can probably be said for every room in the home. Notice that this feeling of confusion is really one of knowledge. My kitchen looks confusing to you, but not to me. In turn, your kitchen looks confusing to me, but not to you. So the confusion is not in the kitchen: it's in the mind. "Why can't things be made simple?" goes the cry. Well, one reason is that life is complex, as are the tasks we encounter. Our tools must match the tasks.
Complexity is essential: it is confusion that is undesirable.
How do we avoid confusion? The most important principle for taming complexity is to provide a good conceptual model, bring structure to the apparent randomness.
Complex things are no longer complicated once they are understood."
The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
Simple Ideas Are Not Easy: A Shipping Container Story
"We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful (and often overlooked in the beginning). Boxes, for example, are simple. Malcolm McLean, the owner of a trucking company, regularly got stuck in traffic on the crowded coastal highways. When he came up with an idea to circumvent the congested roads, it was a simple one - a shipping container, which is basically just a box. When he converted the tanker Ideal X to be able to carry 58 containers and set it to sail on 26 April 1956, it was just because it made more sense to ship parts of a lorry than the whole lorry itself.
In the beginning, it was a logistical nightmare. And by the way: McLean was not the only one who had the idea to use containers on ships. Many others tried it, too, and almost all gave up on the idea soon after - because they lost too much money on it. The idea was simple, but it wasn't easy to put it efficiently into practice.
In hindsight, we know why they failed: the shipowners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines.
McLean understood better than others that it is not the perspective of the ship-owners that counts, but the purpose of the whole trade: to bring goods from the producer to the final destination. Only after aligning every single part of the delivery chain, from packaging to delivery, from the design of the ships to the design of the harbors, was the full potential of the container unleashed."
How to keep writing short and tight?
I suspect I failed with this task when writing this newsletter :)… Will try harder next time around.
"Eliminate everything you don't need. The tighter you write, the more persuasive you will be. Don't just trim the fat. Lop off the stuff you liked but that isn't helping enough."
Edit everything. Aim for a word count (blog posts under 750, email under 250). Say what you really mean. Start boldly. Organise relentlessly. Prune sections and arguments. Use bullets or tablets. Use graphics. Trim connective tissue. Delete weasel words and qualifiers. Important writing should be short.
Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, by Josh Bernoff
I'd love to finish this newsletter with a performance of ultimate beauty, without any unnecessary artifice. Worth noting that Schumann originally wrote more than 30 pieces for the series, and cut it down to only 13.
Schumann - Kinderszenen Op.15, "Scenes from Childhood" | Vladimir Horowitz - YouTube