If You Want To Make Something Complex, Simple, Do This

Meeting complexity with complexity causes more complexity.

Humans love to make things difficult. We add more steps, more communication, more excuses, more worries, ending with more frustration. It’s vital to break down complexity into simple rules, helping you stay focused and quick decisions in the face of chaos.

Here’s how to start creating simple rules:

What is a simple rule?

According to Donald Sull, who wrote the book, wait for it, “Simple Rules,” they are “shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information.”

The rules aren’t universal like “work-hard.” They’re tailored to a particular situation, job, or person who’s using them.

Seek to find your highest leverage activities.

Focus on what drives the most significant results or where your biggest bottleneck occurs.

In one of my companies, we’ve identified a bottleneck to how fast we develop Junior Account Executive team members.

We created a simple rule called “Assign, Highlight, QA, Re-assign.”