Vermont Simplicity

We all have the same number of minutes on earth pear year.

Simplicity leads to focus.

To simplify, you must say "no" to people and opportunities.

But you gain by developing concentrated expertise.

Few organizations will accomplish this. They will try to multi-task and split their focucs. As complexity rises in a linear fasion, the problems it engenders rise as a quadratic function. Priority conflicts break out everywhere.

Complexity is the seed of the dysfunction and bureaucracy swamp. By starting as a seed it is non-threatending, and it takes root.

Consider a salesperson compensation negotiation at a large firm. The participants cannot come to an agreement. To do so, they settle on a complex grid for compensation. Everyone feels relieved, until someone in a separate division points out that in scenario X instead of Y, the margins in the firm change, and the compensation grid won't work. So then the grid is modified, and a sub-grid is created for that situation. But then the accounting system, which was already struggling with the main grid, cannot process the sub-grid. Salespeople start to complain en masse as their commissions are wrong, although it's difficult for them to calculate, as the complexity is overwhelming. The bookkeepers are working overtime. In the middle of this, Frankie the clever sales guy who was always ethical points out that he got compensated on a product that was returned, someting the grid never took into account. But that was on the sub-grid, and margins changed again in the meantime, and now that has to be reversed somehow.

You can see the mess. Costs explode.

It takes experienced and strong-willed managers to quash complexity.