Simple is for everyone
Andy Sack is the CEO of Judy’s Book. He has been sharing his experiences starting and running the social shopping site. Today he wrote this about leadership:
The leader of a business must fight this complexity — and communicate simplicity to the world, to customers, and to employees.
Naturally, I agree. I also think that simplicity is everyone’s job. If you aren’t making things simple, you’re making them complicated. Organizations, be they businesses, countries, or groups of friends, are not top-down. Reducing complexity is everyone’s responsibility.
The brain can only hold so much information at a time. I’ve heard the phrase “five plus or minus two” used a lot. It looks like the original theory (from the fifties) was seven plus or minus two. The point is there is a limit and productivity is about finding good stuff to put in your available buckets. It’s something that should be important to everyone, in every organization.