'Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.’
Edward de Bono

There was a curious chapter in my childhood when I decided to make my own muesli. 

It was the late 1970s. And I recall associating the cereal with all things healthy, natural and European. Sort of Abba, Heidi and Ski Sunday combined in a breakfast bowl.

I set about enhancing a base of oats with some sultanas and raisins I had located in the larder. And then I added some peanuts I bought from Ken’s the Newsagent. Once bathed in a generous dash of red-top milk, my muesli slipped down extremely well.

And yet, after I’d got through the first batch, it occurred to me that preparing the cereal had been quite a bothersome business. All that mess, measurement and surfaces that needed wiping down. (I confess I’ve always been a little lazy in the kitchen.) I wondered if I could achieve the same level of satisfaction by withdrawing an ingredient or two. And so I made the second batch without sultanas. And the third without peanuts. 

Still my muesli was pretty tasty. I congratulated myself on a job well done. With minimum fuss.

It was only when, a few weeks later, my Mum ran out of dried fruit supplies, that my Minimalist Muesli failed to deliver.

‘You’re just eating cold porridge, Jim,’ she observed one morning as she rushed past me on the way to work.

She was right. Somewhere along the road of reduction my Minimalist Muesli had stopped being muesli at all.

'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’
Albert Einstein

In business we often crave simplicity. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves why we value it so highly. And why we must take care when pursuing it.

The world seems to be getting ever more convoluted and confused. So many partners and platforms; data and decisions; routes to market and radical futures. This complexity reduces comprehension and retards action. We risk being swamped in information, fatigued by change, paralysed by choice.

'There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.’
Peter Drucker

The reason we pine for simplicity at work is that it reduces friction and increases efficiency. It makes things easier to understand, execute and communicate. Properly articulated, simplicity unifies and inspires. It gets us marching in the same direction, to the same drumbeat.

'That’s been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.’
Steve Jobs

We should celebrate and reward people who can reduce and distil; condense and concentrate; clarify and crystalise. These are precious skills in an ever more fragmented world. Because simplicity is the great accelerator.

We just need to be mindful that there is a point at which simple turns to simplistic. I guess that’s the point at which my Minimalist Muesli recipe became cold porridge.

'Simple and true,
I just don't know
What I'm gonna do without you.
Simple and plain,
And I just don't know
How I would ever say it any other way.
Simple and true,
I still love you.’

Sara Bareilles, ’Simple and True'

No. 396